Shattered

Sword
The Untold Story of The Battle of Midway

Jonathan B. Parshall • Anthony P. Tully

First Paperback Edition 2007.
Copyright © 2005 by Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully.

Published in the United States by Potomac Books, Inc. All rights reserved. No
part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written
permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical articles and reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Parshal, Jonathan, 1962–
Shattered sword: the untold story of the Battle of Midway / Jonathan
Parshall and Anthony Tully.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-57488-923-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Midway, Battle of, 1942. 2. World War, 1939–1945–Naval
operations, japanese. 3. World War, 1939–1945–Naval operations,
American. 4. World War, 1939–1945–Aerial operations, Japanese. 5. World
War, 1939–1945–Aerial operations, American. I. Tully, Anthony, 1961–II.
Title.
D774.M4P37 2005
940.54’26699–dc22

2005011629
ISBN 978-1-557488-924-6 (paperback: alk. paper)

Designed and typeset by jonathan Parshall.

Printed in the United States on acid-free paper that meets the American National
Standards Institute Z39-48 Standard.

Potomac Books, Inc.

22841 Quicksilver Drive
Dulles, Virginia 20166

First Edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4
 Jon Parshall dedicates this book to Margaret, Anna, and Derek,

and to
the late Dr. David C. Evans, whose kindness
and collegiality rekindled a young man’s dormant
interest in the IJN and set him on this path.

Tony Tully dedicates this book to Dan, Kay, and Matt Tully, Heather
Cooper,
and his nieces and nephews, who speak of their “writer” uncle, and to
the late Walter Lord, whose careful sifting of facts
and rich narrative inspired my own style and love of history,
and whose help honored our work.
Contents

Acknowledgments
Foreword
Introduction
1 Departure
2 Genesis of a Battle
3 Plans
4 Ill Omens
5 Transit
6 Fog and Final Preparations
7 Morning Attack–0430–0600
8 A Lull before the Storm–0600–0700
9 The Enemy Revealed–0700–0800
10 Trading Blows–0800–0917
11 Fatal Complications–0917–1020
12 A Fallacious Five Minutes–1020–1025
13 The Iron Fist–1020–1030
14 Fire and Death–1030–1100
15 Up the Steel Steps–1100–1200
16 Japanese Counterstrikes–1200–1400
17 Last Gasp–1400–1800
18 Scuttlings–1800–Dawn, 5 June
19 Retreat
20 And Death to the Cripples …
21 A Bitter Homecoming
22 Why Did Japan Lose?
23 Assessing the Battle’s Importance
24 The Myths and Mythmakers of Midway

Glossary of Terms
Appendix 1: List of Personnel
Appendix 2: Japanese Order of Battle
Appendix 3: The Carriers of Kido Butai
Appendix 4: The Aircraft of Kido Butai
Appendix 5: Japanese Amphibious Operations against Midway–An Analysis
Appendix 6: Discovery of Carrier Kaga
Appendix 7: Japanese Aircraft Tail Codes at the Battle of Midway
Appendix 8: Japanese Radar at Midway
Appendix 9: Chronology of Japanese Fighter Operations
Appendix 10: Japanese Strike Rosters, Operations MI and AL
Appendix 11: Aleutians Force Distributions
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
About the Authors
List of Figures

1-1: Hashirajima Bay

1-2: Aircraft carrier Akagi
1-3: Aircraft carrier Kaga
1-4: Aircraft carrier S ry
1-5: Captain Yanagimoto Ry saku
1-6: Aircraft carrier Hiry
1-7: Captain Kaku Tomeo
1-8: Vice Admiral Nagumo Ch ichi
1-9: Rear Admiral Kusaka Ry nosuke
1-10: Rear Admiral Yamaguchi Tamon
1-11: Commander Genda Minoru
2-1: The Japanese Empire
2-2: Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku
2-3: Map exercise held by the staff of Naval General Headquarters
3-1: Admiral Chester W. Nimitz
4-1: Final war games carried out on board Yamato, 25 May 1942
5-1: Commander Fuchida Mitsuo
5-2: Routes taken by Imperial Navy
5-3: Basic air organizations
5-4: Kid Butai’s carrier air groups at Midway
6-1: Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher
6-2: Rear Admiral Raymond A. Spruance
6-3: Battleship Haruna
6-4: Situation on 4 June (Tokyo time)
6-5: Schematic of weather conditions June 5/June 4
6-6: Kid Butai’s planned search pattern
7-1: Typical hangar deck interior
7-2: Kido Butai’s formation, 0430
7-3: Lt. Tomonaga J ichi
7-4: Roster for Kid Butai’s 0430 launch against Midway
7-5: Preparations for takeoff on board Akagi
7-6: Heavy cruiser Tone
8-1: Akagi’s port 4.7-inch AA battery
 8-2: Engagement ranges of Japanese antiaircraft weapons
8-3: State of Japanese search arrangements at approximately 0630
8-4: Planned course tracks of Chikuma No. 1 and Tone No. 4 search planes
9-1: 0710 attack on Kid Butai
9-2: Air operations time line
9-3: 0728 Sighting report from Tone No. 4
10-1: Attacks against Kid Butai, 0753–0815
10-2: S ry evading B-17 attack at high speed
10-3: Akagi evading attack by B-17s
10-4: Hiry under attack by B-17s
10-5: Attacks against Kid Butai, 0815–0840
10-6: American air operations, circa 0900
10-7: Revised track chart, Akagi
10-8: Kaga’s landing light array
10-9: Typical Japanese carrier flight deck equipment
10-10: Taking on board a Type 97
10-11: Morning attack on Midway Island
11-1: VT-8 attacks Kid Butai, 0920–0937
11-2: VT-6 attacks Kid Butai, 0940–1000
11-3: American air attacks on Kid Butai, 0920–1020
11-4: Kid Butai formation at 1000
11-5: Kid Butai formation immediately before attack
13-1: Decisive attacks against Kid Butai
13-2: The attack against Akagi
14-1: Known hit locations on Kaga
14-2: Known hit locations on S ry
14-3: Known hit locations on Akagi
14-4: Cross section of Akagi at frame 220
14-5: Lt. Kobayashi Michio
14-6: Hiry launching aircraft during the Battle of Midway
15-1: The travails of Hornet’s morning strike
16-1: Japanese early afternoon search plans
16-2: Hiry dive-bomber attack, 1211–1214
16-3: Japanese dive-bomber during Kobayashi’s attack
17-1: Kid Butai formation, circa 1500
17-2: Tomonaga’s attack on Yorktown
17-3: Hashimoto Toshio
17-4: Decisive damage to Yorktown
17-5: Decisive attack on Hiry
17-6: Hit locations on Hiry
18-1: Kaga’s condition immediately before being scuttled
18-2: Collision of Mogami and Mikuma
19-1: Hiry burning on the morning of 5 June
19-2: Hiry burning on the morning of 5 June
19-3: Sinking locations of Japanese aircraft carriers at Midway
20-1: Mikuma under attack at 1500
20-2: Mikuma after attacks, 6 June
20-3: Mikuma after attacks, 6 June
20-4: Mikuma after attacks, 6 June
A3-1: Aircraft carrier Akagi
A3-2: Aircraft carrier Kaga
A3-3: Aircraft carrier S ry
A3-4: Aircraft carrier Hiry
A4-1: Mitsubishi A6M2 Model 21 carrier fi ghter
A4-2: Nakajima B5N2 carrier attack aircraft
A4-3: Aichi D3A1 carrier bomber
A4-4: Yokosuka D4Y1 carrier bomber
A4-5: Aichi E13A reconnaissance seaplane
A4-6: Nakajima E8N2 reconnaissance seaplane
A6-1: Photo mosaic of Kaga wreckage
A7-1: Japanese aircraft tail code markings
Acknowledgments

Tony and I fortuitously have found ourselves at the center of a nexus of
technology, friends, and community created in the late twentieth century, and are
profoundly grateful to all three. The advent of the Internet, and the spontaneous
creation of globe-spanning communities of interest it fostered, truly
revolutionized the way we were able to approach and assemble this book. By
leveraging the Web, we were able to identify and then contact the right people to
elucidate almost any arcane matter. Not only that, but the answers to questions
that would have taken months to retrieve “back in the old days” of, say, a decade
ago often came back to us within hours. We both consider ourselves extremely
fortunate to have ridden on the cusp of such a providential technological
transformation.
Of course, the people we met during the process of creating Shattered
Sword were ultimately far more important than the communication medium that
connected us to them. It has been our privilege to have widened our circle of
associates enormously during this endeavor and to have made many genuine
friends along the way. It is no exaggeration to say that this book is, in a sense, a
vast collaborative effort on the part of the wider Japanese naval history
community. The research and insights of many extraordinary people on both
sides of the Pacific can be found within these pages. We are profoundly grateful
to them for agreeing to let us benefit from their acumen and apply the fruits of
their hard work. It is appropriate, therefore, that we acknowledge their efforts
first and foremost.
At the top of the list stands historian John Lundstrom, whose fine books on
the Pacific war have been mainstays of its students for twenty-five years. This
could easily have been John’s book, had he chosen to write it. Instead, he gave
openly and generously from his vast store of wisdom on the topic of the Pacific
war in general, and Midway in particular. He has been our tireless advocate,
adviser, and friend– always pointing out new sources we might have overlooked,
new perspectives we might not have considered. This book literally would not
have been possible, let alone had the depth of insight it seeks to deliver, without
John’s selfless collegial efforts and constant encouragement. We are deeply in
his debt.
Noted aviation historian Tagaya Osamu, despite his hectic professional
schedule, gave liberally of his time to review and critique our manuscript. Sam’s
intimate knowledge of Japanese naval aviation, and his detailed, well-considered
comments, saved us from numerous factual errors, gaffes in Japanese
terminology and pronunciation, and other problems that would have damaged
the credibility of this work. Sam’s father, Tagaya Yoshio, a former Imperial
Japanese Navy technical officer, likewise made helpful suggestions for the kanji
on the book’s section headers.
James Sawruk is known to serious students of the Pacific air war as the
undisputed master of the Japanese operational records. Jim generously translated
the carrier air group records for both Midway and the Aleutians operations,
which appear here in English for the first time. Jim also provided numerous
insights into Japanese aviation technique, as well as American aviation
operations. His information provides an important cornerstone of the operational
bedrock on which our account is based.
Mark Peattie, coauthor of two groundbreaking studies of the Imperial Navy,
has been a firm friend since 1996. The work I did for Mark on Sunburst served
as my “apprenticeship” in this trade, and Mark has taught me much of what it
means to be a good scholar and a good colleague. Mark’s gentle comments on
the initial manuscript, much like Sam Tagaya’s, were instrumental in channeling
the enthusiasm of my initial prose into a style more likely to weather the test of
time, for which I am grateful.
David Dickson, perhaps the foremost Western expert on Japanese naval
doctrine and carrier design, provided us with a constant stream of ship plans,
doctrinal tracts and other documents and, most important, his well-honed
comments. David might well have been a coauthor of this work had not other
commitments intruded, but he has been a first-rate collaborator regardless. In the
same vein, J. Michael Wenger, noted expert on both Pearl Harbor and the Indian
Ocean battles, aided us with his consummate knowledge of Japanese carrier
operations and his deep understanding of the Japanese source materials. Mike
also provided many of the pictures that grace this volume. Eric Bergerud, author
of several well-received volumes on the Pacific war, similarly lent his advice
and encouragement and was a sounding board during many pleasant evenings
spent at my home.
Mark Horan, coauthor of A Glorious Page in Our History, augmented and
synthesized Jim Sawruk’s operational information and added to it with his
extensive interviews of the American Midway aviators. Mark’s detailed
knowledge of the American side of the battle greatly informed our
interpretations and graphics for the various American aerial attacks at Midway.
Tony is particularly grateful for Mark’s discussion of interviews that provided
clues for reconstructing the Japanese formation at various times during 4 June.
Likewise, Robert Cressman, Mark’s coauthor and historian at the Naval
Historical Center, imparted his wisdom on many issues, as well as giving the
entire manuscript a very thorough going over, thus eliminating many errors of
fact and terminology. Special notice must be taken of the late, widely respected
Walter Lord, who in his last years graciously agreed to contribute important
unpublished original interviews and notes from his own Midway research. Our
thanks likewise go Mr. Lord’s personal secretary, Lillian Pacifico, who
conscientiously and efficiently arranged for copying and forwarding these
materials to us.
Richard Wolff, author of a forthcoming study of carrier Taih , contributed
his insights on Japanese carrier design and contributed to fact-checking in the
carrier data appendix. Lars Ahlberg helped translate the Japanese carrier crew
rosters and also tracked down the internal plans of S ry . The source of those
plans, Endo Akira, publisher of the fine private ship magazine Senzen Senpaku,
graciously provided additional carrier plans. My good friend Yoshida Akihiko,
former Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force captain and expert on the Imperial
Navy, spent many hours translating those plans into English, as well as
providing a lively, informative correspondence on many matters pertaining to
this book over the years. To Captain Yoshida we are indeed very grateful.
Newspaper reporter Takashi Koganemaru of the Sankei Shimbun in Tokyo,
spent many hours providing translations of several key survivor accounts, as
well as materials from Hy d Nisohachi. Hy d -san, an expert on Japanese
naval aviation and military technology in general, graciously prepared a set of
manuscripts pertaining to Japanese flight deck and arming operations that
confirmed and elaborated on a great deal of what we had previously uncovered
in the extant English-language sources.
Finding new Japanese survivor accounts was a difficult proposition, and in
this we were aided by Yoshida Jiro, who helped arrange interviews with Hiry
survivor Arimura Yoshikazu. Mr. Arimura filled in a number of missing details
for us. His friend, fellow Midway veteran Maeda Takeshi, also supplied us with
his personal remembrances of several of Kid Butai’s senior officers. Likewise,
Ron Werneth, author of a forthcoming book of first-person accounts of Japanese
naval aviators, not only supplied us with portions of his account, but also put us
in contact with Kaga survivor Yoshino Haruo. Mr. Yoshino’s comments
regarding Kaga’s scuttling were most helpful. Noted dive-bomber pilot Abe
Zenji likewise provided a wealth of details of both Japanese operational
technique, as well as insights into the personalities of several of the senior
officers at Midway.
A number of skilled translators helped us along the way. Tony’s longtime
translator, Inoue Hirokuni, did his usual exacting work on our behalf. Mr.
Inoue’s knowledge and ability to translate older Japanese texts proved
invaluable. Further translation help was provided by Quinn Okamoto, Tennessee
Katsuta, Alan Clarke, and Ricardo Jose. We are particularly appreciative of
Jean-Francois Masson’s insights into Japanese naval officers and casualties,
developed from his forthcoming translation of the Japanese Naval Officer
registers.
Photographs for this volume involved the labors of many individuals,
including the indefatigable Mutsuo “Mucho” Uchiyama, Hajime Maejima,
Todaka Kazushige (curator of the Kure Maritime Museum), Uchida Katsuhiro,
Tohru Kizu, Ono Noriko of KK Bestsellers, and Asano Kiyoshi. In America, Dr.
Linton Wells III, Edward Miller, Steve Ewing, Dr. Ellen Schattschneider, Dr.
Donald Goldstein, Tom McConnell and his wife Leslie Berger, and Paul
Wilderson (formerly of the Naval Institute Press) all provided assistance. Dave
Jourdan of Nauticos kindly provided rights to the pictures of Kaga’s wreckage.
Finally, Charles Haberlein, curator of the photographic section of the U.S. Naval
Historical Center in Washington, D.C., provided not only photographs, but also
ship plans, insights into ship construction and damage control, and a kindly
interest toward our project in general.
I am fortunate to have been capable of producing my own illustrations and
maps, but I was very happy to have “outsourced” one piece of artwork–the kanji
for the book’s section headers–which show the beautiful calligraphy of Yuko
Kajiura Smith. Likewise, our good friend Richard Wolff very kindly produced
the computer-generated kanji used in the carrier illustrations and in my other
artwork concerning the battle.
We are also thankful to the following individuals for their contributions:
David Aiken, Allan Alsleben (regarding tail codes and Japanese industrial
production figures), Warren Bailey, Jim Broshot, John Bruning Jr. (for providing
numerous first-person accounts from Japanese aviators and for being
encouraging in general), Chris Carlson, Midway fighter pilot Thomas Cheek,
Robert Dulin, Richard Dunn, William Garzke, Chris Hawkinson, 1st Lt.
Matthew Jones of the U.S. Army (for his very timely assistance checking our
order of battle appendix), Cdr. John Kuehn of the U.S. Navy (for his insights
into strategy and modern U.S. carrier doctrine), James Lansdale, Ed Low, Jeff
Morris, the entire crew at Nauticos, Allyn Nevitt–a key combinedfleet.com
contributor in his own right, who provided important materials regarding
destroyer operations, Dennis Norton (for catching a potentially embarassing map
typo at the 11th hour), Andrew Obluski (for work on biographies of senior ship’s
officers), Okazaki Masao, Nathan Okun (the acknowledged expert in all things
having to do with external ballistics, armor penetration, and World War II U.S.
naval ordnance), William O’Neill (for his help in acquiring sundry source
documents, as well as his well-considered insights into the feasibility of
Japanese amphibious operations directed at Midway), Jeff Palshook (for his
unparalleled knowledge of U.S. submarine operations at Midway), good family
friend Marcia Pankake of the University of Minnesota library (who assisted us in
acquiring microfilms from various private collections), Dave Pluth (owner of
www.j-aircraft.com and breakfast companion of long standing), Clay Ramsey,
an Asiatic Fleet enthusiast (for reading chapters and providing key suggestions),
Carlos Rivera (for his generosity with Japanese-language sources), Brooks
Rowlett, Daniel Rush of the U.S. Navy, William Schleihauf, C. Raymond Smith,
H. P. Willmott, and, last but not least, Alan Zimm, for his insights into Japanese
logistics and floatplane operations. If I have forgotten anyone, please forgive my
unintended oversight. Tony and I, of course, take full responsibility for any
omissions or factual errors in this work–they would have been much more
numerous but for the good efforts of the people just mentioned.
Quinn Bracken, my longtime accomplice in crime at my Web site on the
Imperial Navy, www.combinedfleet.com, deserves credit for keeping the site
alive while I was busy writing. And writing. Similar kudos go to Robert Hackett
and Sander Kingsepp, who contributed the majority of the site’s new content
during that time. In addition to Tony’s discussion list on combinedfleet.com, the
very lively message boards on www.j-aircraft.com have provided Tony and me
with a congenial, supportive, and infinitely interested and interesting community
surrounding all things having to do with the Imperial Navy. We heartily salute
all the “regulars” on these boards, as this book represents a positive example (we
hope) of what collaborative research can achieve. By the same token, I am
grateful to the members of the Midway Roundtable (www.midway42.org),
whose enthusiasm and collective knowledge has been tempered with patience for
my somewhat iconoclastic views. Anyone interested in learning more about the
battle would do well to consider joining this group.
Don McKeon of Potomac Books was our worthy editor and grappled
gamely with a manuscript that was rather longer than originally promised. We
are grateful for his forbearance and help. Likewise, we wish to thank our copy
editor, Gary Kessler, and John Church, Sam Dorrance, Dana Adams, Katie
Freeman, Claire Noble, and the other good people at Potomac Books for their
efforts. Finally, our agent, Jim Hornfischer, himself a naval historian of note,
was our tireless advocate, helping us navigate the publishing world, and liberally
dispensing good advice along the way.
The families and confidants of authors are never unaffected by their
undertakings, and in recognition of that we would like to close with some
personal acknowledgments of their support.
Tony: A work of this scope does not come into being with just the
assistance of those familiar with the subject. It also relies on the encouragement
and support of family and cherished friends. To that end I wish to extend
profound gratitude to my family–parents Dan and Kay Tully, brother Matt, sister
Heather, and their families. They have been able to see this work grow out of an
elementary student’s freehand drawings of warships into the present work.
Special friends and confidants on this journey include James Moore, whose
literary roundtable fueled the muse, whose keen suggestions sharpened my
thoughts, and whose jesting kept everything in perspective; to Janice Malmgren,
whose loving counsel never ceased to inspire; and to Jeff Gilchrist, without
whose principles of self-management this work that fulfills a long-held dream
might not have found expression. The role they played will always be treasured.
Jon: My parents, Peter and Carol, are to be commended for having
supported their son’s interests: first dinosaurs, then tanks, then ships–never truly
realizing, I suspect, that things might eventually get to their present state of
affairs. Even more bravely, my father, a former college English professor, acted
as my surrogate target audience for this work and has read the manuscript in its
many stages more often than any person besides Tony and me. His constant
stream of positive and well-considered suggestions for restructuring and
rewording have been of immeasurable value. Finally, of course, I am
permanently in debt to my beloved wife, Margaret. Her good-natured jibes and
amused eye rolling at her frequently preoccupied spouse have been a much-
needed tonic for the preternatural intensity that has consumed me on far too
many late evenings (and early mornings) over these past five years. I promise,
Honey, I’ll fix the ceiling in the playroom now. The same goes to my children,
Anna and Derek, who have now spent more than half their lives watching their
“geek dad” write this thing, and who have wisely adopted their mother’s
bemused tolerance of his idiosyncrasies. You three make it all worthwhile.
Foreword

In June 1942, Admiral Chester W Nimitz’s United States Pacific Fleet
surprised and decisively defeated Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku’s Imperial
Japanese Combined Fleet during its attempt to capture tiny Midway atoll in the
Central Pacific Ocean. Described variously in American histories as a “miracle”
and an “incredible victory,” the Battle of Midway is considered a paradigm of
the spectacular reversal of military fortune by the weaker force. The tale
possesses all the elements of a Greek epic poem, or tragedy, if one considers the
Japanese viewpoint. In this most extraordinary of naval battles, there were
plentiful instances of hubris and courage, complacency and guile, calculation
and sacrifice, disaster and enduring success. Fortune’s favors flitted from one
side to the other as if the fickle gods actually controlled events, until the four
aircraft carriers of the Japanese striking force suffered the ultimate penalty. The
myths that arose after the battle from both defeated and victor were also
exceptionally powerful and have obscured the whole truth for more than sixty
years.
The Pacific portion of the Second World War opened on December 7, 1941.
Hitherto vastly underestimated by the Western Allies, who were preoccupied
with Nazi Germany, the Imperial Japanese Navy crushed the Pacific Fleet’s
battleships at Pearl Harbor. That staggering blow opened the way for Japan to
conquer Southeast Asia and the Philippines. Moreover, the Japanese achieved
their signal triumph through a new form of sea power. Yamamoto’s
unprecedented concentration of naval airpower in the form of the six mighty
aircraft carriers of Vice Admiral Nagumo Chuichi’s Kid Butai (“Mobile
Force”) created a task force against which no opponent could stand and survive.
In the next five months, Japan triumphed in East Asia. Spearheaded by a few
carriers of its own that missed destruction at Pearl Harbor, the Pacific Fleet
nevertheless confined its raids to places where it was known the Japanese
carriers would not be. By spring 1942, Japan’s strategic successes had come so
effortlessly that the Imperial Navy was momentarily at a loss over what to do
next. Debate raged at the highest level whether to seek the isolation of Australia
by seizing several island bases in the South Pacific or to do what Yamamoto
desired and finish what was begun at Pearl Harbor. Yamamoto sought to use the
assault on Midway to draw the remnants of the Pacific Fleet into decisive battle
and destroy them. In the end, the Imperial Navy opted for compromise. A
limited move against the periphery of Australia would take place in early May
with the seizure of Port Moresby in New Guinea. Then massive offensives
against Midway and also the western Aleutians would follow in early June.
Thereafter, in triumph, the Combined Fleet would regroup at Truk and that
summer complete the isolation of Australia by taking New Caledonia, Fiji, and
Samoa. The famous Doolittle raid in April 1942 only hardened Japanese resolve
to get the job done and end any threat to the homeland. Assaults against the outer
islands of the Hawaiian chain would begin possibly in the fall of 1942. Either the
discouraged Americans would submit to a negotiated peace or dash themselves
against an impregnable defensive perimeter that barred the way into the western
Pacific.
Far from cringing in desperation as the Japanese imagined, the Pacific Fleet
grew in confidence and strength in early 1942. Nimitz benefited from the
increasing excellence of his radio intelligence, which began forecasting broad
Japanese strategic moves with remarkable accuracy. That allowed him to
position his forces in threatened areas ahead of time and thus negate the
Japanese advantages of interior lines and holding the initiative. In April 1942,
Nimitz resolved to meet the Japanese in battle in the South Pacific, where he
thought the main thrust would come. In the first wave of the defense, two
carriers under Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher checked the Japanese advance
in the Coral Sea and saved Port Moresby. Fletcher sank or disabled three carriers
for the loss of one of his own. By failing to capture Port Moresby, Japan suffered
its first strategic setback of the war. All three carriers sent against Port Moresby
had also been earmarked for the Midway offensive. The U.S. carriers had shown
up in the Coral Sea earlier than expected and fought well, but Yamamoto did not
care, for he believed both U.S. carriers had succumbed there. Nagumo’s four
remaining carriers were sufficient for victory. The main difficulty at Midway
seemed to be to induce the Americans to come out of Hawaii and actually fight.
Even while the Battle of the Coral Sea raged, Nimitz learned of indications
the Japanese would soon attack Midway and even possibly Oahu. He redeployed
his carriers northward from the distant South Pacific and made ready to defend
Midway against strong odds. Nimitz’s decision to fight is dramatically portrayed
as a desperate gamble where the outnumbered Pacific Fleet could only hope to
sink its weight in Japanese ships before going down fighting. Yet, he had strong
reasons for optimism at Midway, because the situation certainly warranted
taking a “calculated risk.” To advance to Midway, Japan must expose its
precious carriers to several forms of counterattack strongly abetted by the
element of surprise. The U.S. carriers would finally enjoy a “fairly strong” land-
based air umbrella to report and engage the enemy, whereas the Japanese
carriers lacked similar support. An admiral who wore the dolphin insignia,
Nimitz anticipated a stellar performance by his submarines. Moreover, he, unlike
the historians, did not realize the full weight of the resources arrayed against
him. A persistent Midway myth is that the intelligence picture was so perfect,
like reading the actual Japanese operation order, that even the day and time of
the initial attack on Midway was known well beforehand. In truth, Nimitz
worked only from a broad outline of Japanese intentions and partial order of
battle, absolutely invaluable as they were. The odds still favored Japan, but he
had devised a careful plan and knew victory would pay enormous dividends. It
did, but no one could have ever imagined how that victory would actually be
achieved.
The U.S. carrier attacks on the morning of 4 June certainly succeeded
beyond reasonable expectation. Three of four of Nagumo’s carriers sustained
mortal damage before they could respond in kind. Even the trade of the carrier
Yorktown for the fourth carrier did not affect the outcome of the battle. Midway
truly was an “incredible victory,” but (with apologies to the late Walter Lord, a
fine gentleman as well as a superb scholar) not so much, as commonly thought,
in terms of the overall disparity of odds. Instead, “incredible” better described
the chances of such a poorly framed U.S. attack succeeding so brilliantly. The
U.S. carriers were extremely fortunate to defeat a foe, who with a few telling
exceptions handled his aircraft far better than they did. The Achilles’ heel of
Japan’s carrier force was defense, primarily from the lack of radar and adequate
shipboard antiaircraft guns. The American nemesis was teamwork above the
squadron level. Fletcher and his principal subordinate, Rear Admiral Raymond
A. Spruance, had the right to expect, once having maneuvered their task forces
within striking range, that the carriers could accomplish their prime mission of
delivering an effective attack and afterward retrieve their aircraft. Yet, only
Fletcher’s flagship, the highly innovative Yorktown (best of all the U.S. carriers
in 1942), had contrived to get all her strike planes simultaneously to the target.
Spruance’s main effort, upon which so much depended, proved very nearly a
shambles. Most of the Hornet planes never even laid eyes on the enemy, and at
the outset the Enterprise group fragmented into three widely separated elements.
Glorious success arose from individual initiative on the part of a few splendid
leaders, the heroic sacrifice of the Midway attackers and the carrier torpedo
planes and the dazzling skill of some of the dive-bomber pilots.
More books have been written about Midway than any other single naval
battle of the Second World War. What is fascinating is that, in the West, the
earliest scripted version of Midway came virtually to be set in stone. The near-
unanimity of historical interpretation stifled the posing of new questions and
reexamination of events from different perspectives. I found this to be true in
1984 when I wrote The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl
Harbor to Midway, which challenged certain widely held beliefs about Midway.
The same stubborn orthodoxy of thought prevailed in Western
interpretations of the Japanese side of Midway, which largely stemmed from
Fuchida Mitsuo and Okumiya Masatake’s Midway: The Battle that Doomed
Japan (1955) and Gordon W Prange’s 1983 Miracle at Midway. Thus it was for
me a great surprise and pleasure six years ago to make the acquaintance, via the
Internet, of Jon Parshall and Anthony Tully, and learn of the revolutionary new
ideas they were developing on the Battle of Midway. Moreover, I was delighted
to be invited to join in discussions of this newly emerging evidence, and along
with other Midway experts such as Mark Horan and James Sawruk, to offer my
two cents’ worth on a host of amazing new ideas and interpretations. I was truly
shocked to learn from Jon and Tony that much of what Fuchida wrote about the
Battle of Midway (and some on Pearl Harbor for that matter) has been debunked
in Japan, where a whole corpus of historical thought on Midway remained
untapped in the West. One of the many achievements in this book is the bridging
of these two hitherto isolated historical traditions. Shattered Sword is without
doubt the most significant and balanced treatment of the Japanese side of the
Battle of Midway and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.
John B. Lundstrom
Introduction

The Battle of Midway has rightly remained one of the most important and
widely studied engagements in naval history. It is, in the eyes of many, the
quintessential contest between Japan and America– the decisive naval battle in
the Pacific war. This is understandable, since Midway contains all the timeless
elements that define a classic clash of arms–an apparent mismatch in the strength
of the combatants, a seesaw battle with the initiative passing back and forth, acts
of tremendous heroism on both sides, and an improbable climax. It is a battle
that has rightly captured the imagination of subsequent generations seeking to
understand both the engagement itself and its effects on the course of the greater
conflict of which it was a part.
By any measure, June 4, 1942, was a watershed date, after which the
Pacific war entered an entirely new phase. For the Japanese, Midway abruptly
rang down the curtain on a triumphant first six months of war and largely
destroyed Japan’s ability to initiate major new offensives in the Pacific. The
destruction of the Imperial Navy’s four finest aircraft carriers–Akagi, Kaga, Hiry
, and S ry –forever ruined the world-class naval aviation force with which it
had opened hostilities. While the imperial fleet remained a force to be reckoned
with, it never regained the combination of material and qualitative superiority
that made it so feared during the initial phase of the conflict.
For the U.S. Navy, the Battle of Midway marked a reprieve; a chance to
gather itself and turn to new tasks. If Midway checked the ambitions of Japan
and signaled the destruction of its primary means of naval offense, it foretold
just the opposite for the Americans. The battle of 4 June meant that the Japanese
and U.S. navies would fight on roughly equal terms for the remainder of 1942.
American commanders, for the first time since their humiliation at Pearl Harbor,
could now legitimately contemplate offensives of their own against the enemy. It
is no exaggeration to say that only a victory at Midway could have created the
moral and material basis for the crucial American campaign at Guadalcanal. And
if Midway itself did not harm Japan’s military in absolute terms as much as the
following year’s worth of warfare in the Solomons would, it clearly opened the
gates to this hellish attritional cycle.
 For naval historians, particularly those interested in the Pacific war,
Midway has lost none of its fascination over the intervening sixty years. Indeed,
particularly for the authors, both of whom have been captivated by the Imperial
Navy since childhood, this battle encapsulates both the most laudable, as well as
the most frustrating aspects of the imperial fleet. It is not a stretch to state that in
June 1942 Japan possessed the most powerful navy in the world in many
respects. The Navy had opened the war with a stunning attack on Pearl Harbor,
followed up two days later by the shocking destruction of the British capital
ships Prince of Wales and Repulse, and then proceeded to systematically crush
the Allied flotillas in the Philippines and around Java. Powerful raids against
Port Darwin in Australia and then into the Indian Ocean had cemented Nihon
Kaigun’s fearsome reputation.
Japan’s carrier force in particular was truly without peer. At Pearl Harbor it
demonstrated a level of sophistication that the U.S. Navy would not be able to
replicate for another two years. Whereas the Allies were still using their flight
decks singly or in pairs, Japan had used six fleet carriers to sweep American
airpower aside and smash a major naval base in broad daylight. In terms of their
ability to use massed airpower, the Imperial Navy had no rival. Japan’s pilots
were war hardened, supremely aggressive, and highly skilled. Likewise,
Japanese carrier aircraft–epitomized by the marvelous Mitsubishi Zero–were in
many cases superior to those used by the U.S. Navy at this stage of the war.
And yet, despite these formidable strengths, at Midway the imperial fleet
committed a series of irretrievable strategic and operational mistakes that seem
almost inexplicable. In so doing, it doomed its matchless carrier force to
premature ruin. Before it even arrived off Midway, the Japanese Navy had
frittered away its numerical advantage through a hopelessly misguided battle
plan. During the battle itself, the Japanese in many cases performed sloppily,
almost haphazardly–a far cry from the elite force that had opened the war. The
reasons why this happened are manifold and complex and defy easy explanation.
All great battles develop their own unique mythos. That is to say, they
become wrapped in a set of popular beliefs–“the common wisdom”–that
interprets the battle and its meanings. In many cases, this mythology centers on a
pivotal event– some noteworthy occurrence that captures the imagination,
thereby crystallizing what the battle was all about. History is replete with such
defining moments–the breaking of the French Imperial Guard at Waterloo,
Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, the siege of Bastogne during the Battle of the
Bulge. They are timeless events, and not to be reinterpreted lightly. Yet, it is
imperative that such momentous happenings be understood properly, for if these
are the lenses through which we perceive great battles, then it stands to reason
that any flaws in these crystals must necessarily distort our perception of the
battle as a whole.
This has certainly been true of Midway, whose defining moment will
always be the devastating and seemingly last-minute attack of American dive-
bombers against the Japanese carrier task force at 1020 on the morning of 4
June. The image of American Dauntlesses hurtling down from the heavens to
drop their bombs on helpless Japanese carriers, their decks packed with aircraft
just moments away from taking off, has been emblazoned on the American
consciousness since the day the battle was fought. Yet, this precise version of the
events surrounding the decisive attack–a rendition that would be accepted in any
contemporary history book–is but one, and perhaps not the greatest, of the
misconceptions surrounding Midway. In fact, the 1020 attack did not happen in
this way, in that it did not catch the Japanese in any way ready to launch their
own attack. Others myths of the battle include:

• The Americans triumphed against overwhelming odds at the Battle of

Midway.
• The Aleutians Operation was conceived by Admiral Yamamoto, the
commander in chief of Combined Fleet, as a diversion designed to lure
the American fleet out of Pearl Harbor.
• During the transit to Midway, Admiral Yamamoto withheld important
intelligence information from Admiral Nagumo, the operational
commander of the carrier striking force. As a result, Nagumo was in the
dark concerning the nature of the threat facing him.
• Had the Japanese implemented a two-phase reconnaissance search on the
morning of 4 June, they would have succeeded in locating the American
fleet in time to win the battle.
• The late launch of cruiser Tone’s No. 4 scout plane doomed Admiral
Nagumo to defeat in the battle.
• Had Admiral Nagumo not decided to rearm his aircraft with land-attack
weapons, he would have been in a position to attack the Americans as
soon as they were discovered.
• The sacrifice of USS Hornet’s Torpedo Squadron Eight was not in vain,
since it pulled the Japanese combat air patrol fighters down to sea level,
thereby allowing the American dive-bombers to attack at 1020.
• Japan’s elite carrier aviators were all but wiped out during the battle.

All of these are fallacious. All are either untrue, or at least require careful
clarification. Some of these ideas have been implanted in the Western accounts
as a result of misunderstandings of the records of the battle. Some have resulted
from a faulty understanding of the basic mechanics of how the battle was fought.
Some are misrepresentations of the truth that were deliberately introduced by
participants in the battle. And each has caused lasting distortions in Western
perceptions of the reasons for victory and defeat. Correcting these distortions is
the overriding goal of this book.
How could such misconceptions creep into the historical record? It is
fundamentally because the study of Midway in the West has been conducted
primarily on American terms, from American perspectives, and using essentially
American sources. “Winners write the history books” is certainly true in this
case. The fact that the winners of Midway by and large also had no ability to
read the loser’s history books certainly didn’t help matters. As a result, the
majority of the English-language accounts written about this pivotal battle have
been built around a trio of translated Japanese sources. These are the after-action
log of Admiral Nagumo (“The Nagumo Report”), which was captured on Saipan
in 1944 and later translated; the interviews with Japanese naval officers
conducted immediately after the war by the United States Strategic Bombing
Survey (“USSBS”); and Fuchida Mitsuo’s book, Midway: The Battle that
Doomed Japan, which was originally published in Japan in 1951 and then
translated and republished in the United States in 1955. These three sources,
augmented by survivor accounts and other fragmentary records, have formed the
backbone of the Japanese account for fifty years.
Unfortunately, one of these sources–Fuchida’s Midway–is irretrievably
flawed. The effects of Fuchida’s misstatements, which have lain undetected until
recently, are manifold. In essence, every single Western history of the battle has
passed along Fuchida’s untruths to at least some extent, because his errors
pertain to very important facets of the engagement: Nagumo’s intelligence
estimates, his search plan, Japanese flight deck operations, and the nature of the
decisive American dive-bomber attack. Fuchida’s are not minor errors of
omission–they are fundamental and willful distortions of the truth that must be
corrected. Intriguingly, Fuchida’s account has been overturned in Japan for more
than twenty years. Yet, in the West, he has remained as authoritative as on the
day his book was first published.
This book builds a new account that not only corrects these errors, but also
broadens our understanding of the Japanese side of the battle. In this, we employ
three new approaches that have yet to be used extensively in any prior study of
Midway. The first is a detailed understanding of how Japanese aircraft carriers
operated. Carriers, of course, formed the very heart of the battle. And in this
context, seemingly trivial technical details–the configuration of the ship’s
command spaces and flag accommodations, the arrangement of the hangar
decks, the relative speed of a ship’s elevator cycles–could have important
implications for how a carrier performed its mission. These details are anything
but dry–taken together, they help bring the tangible personalities of these
warships more clearly into focus.
In addition to the details surrounding the carriers, we also draw heavily on
the Japanese operational records of the battle. While it is true that the logs of the
individual Japanese vessels at Midway were destroyed after the war, the air
group records of the carriers survived. The tabular data contained in these
reports (known as k d ch shos) has been used in some newer works to supply
such details as the names of individual Japanese pilots. Yet, these records have
never been used in a systematic way to understand what the carriers themselves
were actually doing at any given time. For instance, knowing when a carrier was
launching or recovering aircraft can also be used to derive a sense for the
direction the ship was heading (into the wind), and what was occurring on the
flight decks and in the hangars. Thus, we use the k d ch shos as tools to
understand the carrier operations of 4 June in more detail than has been
attempted previously.
Third, we apply an understanding of Japanese naval doctrine–in particular
their carrier doctrine–to analyze how and why the Japanese operated as they did.
Heretofore, American authors trying to put themselves in Nagumo’s shoes had to
make the assumption that Japanese carriers and air groups functioned pretty
much as did their American counterparts. In fact, though, because of differences
in both ship design and doctrine, the Japanese operated very differently from the
U.S. Navy. Worse yet, many earlier authors didn’t really have a grasp of how
American carriers operated, either. The result has been that many of the
criticisms of Admiral Nagumo’s actions during the battle have proceeded from a
flawed basis, leading to equally flawed conclusions.
It is only recently that information on Japanese doctrine has begun to be
employed in the study of the Pacific war. Works like John Lundstrom’s First
Team series contained the first solid information on Japanese air group
operations and doctrine. These were augmented in 1997 by the publication of
David Evans and Mark Peattie’s landmark study Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics and
Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, and Peattie’s subsequent Sunburst:
The Rise of Japanese Naval Aviation. The latter, in particular, supplied sufficient
information on Japanese carrier operations to form the basis for this book.
We expand on these earlier works by drawing on additional Japanese
sources particular to the battle. The core of these is the official Japanese war
history series– the various volumes of the Boeicho Boeikenshujo Senshibu (often
referred to as “BKS,” or Senshi Sosho). Compiled by the War History Section of
the Japanese Defense Agency, these studies are highly regarded for their
comprehensive treatment of individual campaigns, as well as their general lack
of bias. The Midway volume, Midowei Kaisen (Battle of Midway), was
published in 1971 and remains the authoritative Japanese work on the topic.
Beyond Senshi Sosho, we also have used never-before-translated Japanese
primary and secondary sources, including monographs on Japanese carrier and
air operations, as well as accounts of various Japanese survivors.
Taken together, any reader of this book will emerge with a fuller
understanding of how and why the Japanese Navy, and its carriers in particular,
operated as it did. In the process, we hope to give our readers a better flavor of
what it was like to be a sailor serving aboard an imperial warship. And while this
is neither a technical design study nor a treatise on Japanese carrier doctrine, we
also necessarily seek to relate (with the least pain possible to the reader) the
critical points regarding Japanese weaponry, doctrine, and carrier operations that
shaped the outcome at Midway.
While our work is intended as a new, comprehensive, and clarified history
of the Japanese Navy at Midway, it is also a very tightly scoped work. For
instance, although we are keenly interested in the carrier operations and
command decisions of the Americans during the battle, we do not seek to
address comprehensively all aspects of the American account. Much of this has
already been covered by such works as Walter Lord’s Incredible Victory,
Gordon Prange’s Miracle at Midway, and two other fine, but underappreciated
volumes–H. P. Willmott’s The Barrier and the Javelin, and Robert Cressman et
al.’s A Glorious Page in Our History. Likewise, we do not deal exhaustively
with such topics as American cryptography–we have nothing to add in these
matters that hasn’t been previously covered by works such as the late Admiral
Edwin Layton’s And I Was There. Nor do we seek to be the final word on the air
combat of the battle–John Lundstrom’s account holds that honor for the
foreseeable future. This is not to say that nothing new remains to be done on the
American side of the battle. However, we choose to focus primarily on the
Japanese history, since there are clearly important new aspects of the tale that
need to be clarified here.
The work is divided into three main sections. The first–Preliminaries (Josh
)–is an examination of the strategic context of the engagement, including its
origins, and the political machinations that led to the creation of the disastrous
Japanese plan of battle. The second section–Battle Diary (Sent Nikki)–is a
detailed narrative of the battle itself, from the morning of 4 June until the final
return of the Japanese fleet to home waters on 14 June. The third section–
Reckonings (Kessan)–analyzes why the Japanese lost at Midway, as well as
what it meant to lose this particular battle within the larger context of the Pacific
war. The book closes with a reexamination and clarification of some of the
myths of Midway mentioned previously.
Throughout the book, our narrative perspective is almost wholly that of the
Japanese. Furthermore, during the description of the actual battle of 4 June, the
book is almost exclusively carrier centric in its viewpoint. Except in those cases
where crucial context is required to understand the events at hand, we
deliberately relate the battle’s narrative in terms of what would have been either
directly visible or otherwise known from the bridges of the Japanese carriers
themselves.
Some might question the validity of adopting a “carrier-centric” narrative
viewpoint for a battle as large as Midway. Yet, this approach lends itself well to
recreating the “fog of war,” which is crucial to understanding the handicaps
under which Admiral Nagumo had to labor in making his command decisions. It
was on board the Japanese aircraft carriers that most of the crucial decisions of
the day were made. It was the destruction of the Japanese carriers that brought
the battle to an effective close, even though the bulk of the imperial fleet
involved in the overall operation remained unengaged. And it was on board the
carriers that the vast majority of Japanese casualties were suffered. Thus, the
story of Akagi, Kaga, Hiry , and S ry , in many ways, is the Japanese story at
Midway.
This method also has merits from a strategic perspective, because it was
around the operational realities of the carrier weapon system that strategy
necessarily had to be crafted. Understanding the strengths and limitations of their
own carrier force in early 1942 should have had a dramatic impact on the
Japanese operations that unfolded during that time frame. Not only that, but as
we will show, the number and strength of the carrier force in itself should have
imposed a logic on Japan’s strategic calculus in terms of target selection and
operational timetables. Contrary to outside appearances, the truth was that, after
six months of war, Japan’s naval aviation arm was already balanced on a knife’s
edge in terms of its men and materiel. The carriers and crews were tired and
badly in need of refit and repair. In the same vein, Japan’s naval air groups,
though still highly proficient, needed to be replenished with new aircraft and
pilots.
Yet, we argue that these realities were not understood by the men vying
over the right to decide Japanese naval strategy. These were Admiral Yamamoto
Isoroku, commander in chief of the Imperial Navy’s Combined Fleet, and his
various foes in Naval General Headquarters. Their political wrangling,
complicated still further by the baleful influence of interservice rivalries with the
Imperial Army, badly warped the process of strategy formulation. Likewise, the
morally dishonest methods Yamamoto employed to ensure his victory in this
process, and employed again during the operational planning phase, ensured that
the Midway battle plan was flawed from the outset. Worse yet, during this same
period, and despite the fact that any rational analysis should have shown that all
of Japan’s fleet carriers would be needed at Midway, Naval GHQ continued to
insist that these irreplaceable combat assets be doled out to subsidiary operations
in penny packets, thereby exposing them to unacceptable dangers.
These mistakes belie an unpleasant truth, that despite the Imperial Navy
having opened the Pacific war with one of the most daring military feats of all
time–the massed carrier attack on Pearl Harbor–neither Yamamoto nor Naval
GHQ truly comprehended the strengths and weaknesses of the world-class
weapons system they possessed. As a result, they unwittingly consigned Japan’s
finest fleet–the product of untold years of industrial and organizational toil–to its
premature doom off Midway. To have lost this magnificent force in such a
miserable–and wholly preventable–fashion, was one of the greatest of Japan’s
failings as a modern nation. For Yamamoto personally, the defeat at Midway
utterly eclipsed his very real achievements in the first six months of World War
II.
At a deeper level, though, it is important to clarify that the defeat at
Midway was not just the product of flawed decisions by a handful of men at the
top. Likewise, Admiral Nagumo’s command decisions on the day of the battle,
which have widely been held up as having been the reason for Japan’s defeat,
were not solely to blame, either. Instead, we will show that Yamamoto, Nagumo,
and indeed all the Japanese forces involved, suffered from deep-seated flaws that
were a product of the Imperial Navy’s strategic outlooks, doctrinal tenets, and
institutional cultures. This is not to say that individual mistakes were not made,
but these mistakes must be understood within the proper context. In fact,
contrary to the prevailing wisdom, the seeds of Japan’s defeat at Midway were
not planted in the six months of easy Japanese victories that led up to the battle,
but had instead been sown in the very earliest days of the Imperial Navy’s
development.
The Battle of Midway loses none of its grandeur when retold from a
different perspective. Instead, the fundamentals of the battle’s greatness remain
the same. Midway is, and always will be, a tale of confusion and difficult
decisions, of tremendous bravery, and of furious combat to the death. Yet,
inevitably the Japanese story is also that of a mighty force brought low and
contains all the grief and human suffering that characterize the losing side of any
great conflict. These aspects bear retelling. Indeed, they warrant amplification
from new sources. An accurate account of the Japanese travails of June 4, 1942–
of what it meant to be trapped on board a burning vessel for hours on end, of the
horrendous conditions encountered by the men of the Imperial Navy as they
fought their own personal battles aboard their doomed warships, and of how the
survivors ultimately managed to come through their ordeal-deserves to be
related, for it is a tale that transcends nationality. It reminds us that all warfare,
in the final analysis, boils down to a lowest common human denominator. All
parties to a great battle–winner and loser–can benefit from greater knowledge of
the other’s story in this respect. Particularly in an age where aerial warfare is
often strangely antiseptic, and where violence is inflicted from great distances
and seemingly omnipotent heights, we would do well to remember what the
ultimate, intimate results of such activities are.
 PART I

Preliminaries

Departure

The Inland Sea of Japan was still veiled in darkness when the anchorage at
Hashirajima began to awaken. On board the aircraft carrier Akagi, white-clad
crewmen, ghostly in the deep twilight on the forecastle, began raising the ship’s
anchors. The clatter of the capstan was overlain with the bright sound of
spraying water as the foredeck gang played hoses along the dripping anchor
chains, washing them clean of the harbor’s black mud. All around Akagi, just
barely discernable in the gloom, lay dozens of great gray warships, many of
them weighing anchor as well. Nautical twilight was at 0437. But the dark
waters of the bay, sheltered by the mountainous islands, would remain shrouded
in gray until well after sunlight dappled the hilltops. Akagi would sortie around
dawn. The date was 27 May 1942.
Those in the deck gang chatted in tight little knots as they worked. The
topics of conversation were the age-old harps of all sailors–wives and
girlfriends, home, and what was likely to be on today’s menu. Hopefully, this
morning’s fare would be something soothing to the stomach, as many of the men
were rather hung over. The drinking on board Akagi the previous night had
started early and ended late. The crew on the foredeck knew this much–as
tedious as raising anchor could be, duty on the foredeck was still vastly to be
preferred to the job of cleaning out the lavatories this morning. Only the bravest
(or most coerced) of men would venture into those spaces after the excesses of
the night before.
By far the prevalent topic of conversation, though, concerned the operation
ahead. Something was up; the activity in Hashirajima this morning made that
much clear. It was known that a large banquet had been held on board Combined
Fleet’s flagship two nights previously for the fleet’s commanders. The top brass
didn’t throw parties just for laughs. Akagi was headed somewhere important.
Where to was anybody’s guess, though. Many of the men still sported suntans
from their recent operations in the South Pacific, and it was possible they might
be headed there again, either to Truk, Japan’s great sanctuary in the Carolines, or
perhaps Singapore. They might even be returning to Staring Bay in the Celebes,
which had been their base of operations for much of March. Others didn’t think
so. The scuttlebutt around the fleet was that some of the ships provisioning at
Kure lately had been fitted for cold-weather duty. That meant Akagi could be
headed north. Having attacked Pearl Harbor in December, the crewmen knew
that the North Pacific was no joke–the weather had been atrocious, and high seas
had washed several men overboard. Hopefully, though, the weather in June
would be a little more forgiving.

1-1: Hashirajima Bay, situated near Hiroshima and Kure, was Japan’s most
important naval anchorage. The route of Kid Butai’s exit from the Inland Sea is
shown.

Located in the seclusion of Hiroshima Bay, the fastness of Hashirajima was
perfectly situated to give access to the open ocean within a few hours’ steaming.
It was Japan’s equivalent of Britain’s Scapa Flow or America’s Hampton Roads-
a vast anchorage, where the entire fleet could be safely sheltered close to its
logistical centers and the sea, and yet protected from snooping enemies. It was
ringed with antiaircraft weapons, interdicted by antitorpedo netting, and
ceaselessly patrolled by smaller warships. Phone lines laid to the main mooring
buoys meant that the fleet’s flagships enjoyed secure communication back to
Naval General Headquarters in Tokyo.
 Hashirajima lay just twenty-two nautical miles from the lively port city of
Hiroshima. Closer yet, sixteen miles to the northeast, lay the great naval arsenal
and shipyard of Kure. Kure had built an appreciable portion of the Japanese
Navy. It was also close to the Naval Academy, which was located just west of
the yard on the island of Etajima. It was here, in the red-brick buildings built in
deliberate imitation of the British Royal Navy, that the emperor’s naval officers
were trained. The combination of Kure’s yards, Etajima’s academy, and
Hashirajima’s anchorage made this area of the Inland Sea the very cradle of the
Japanese Navy.
From where she lay, Akagi’s crewmen could see the battleship anchorage
near Hashirajima island. There lay the seven great dreadnoughts of First Fleet,
the symbols for the last twenty-five years of Japan’s undeniable status as a major
navy. At their head was the largest battleship ever built, the 69,000-ton Yamato,
which had become operational just two days earlier. Flagship of Combined Fleet
and home to its commander, Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, her bulk
overshadowed every other warship in the bay.1 For many officers in the Navy,
her enormous guns still represented the apotheosis of naval power. Bristling with
weapons, her girth made her appear almost like a mountain rising out of the still
waters. Yet her swept-back stack, undulating deck, and streamlined
superstructure lent her a grace that seemed curiously out of place on such a
behemoth.
The battleships wouldn’t be sailing this morning. No surprise there, joked
Akagi’s crewmen–they hadn’t done anything during the entire war. For them the
battleships were irrelevant, nothing more than a symbol of a bygone era. Worse
yet, in the workaholic culture of the Imperial Navy, which, popular lore had it,
operated eight days a week, the battleships were seen as slackers. While Akagi
and her companions had been winning unprecedented victories, the battleships
had largely lain at anchor, leaving only to conduct gunnery practice in the nearby
Iyo Nada waterway, and earning in the process the unwanted sobriquet of the
“Hashirajima Fleet.” Only the four fast battleships of Battle Division 3 (hereafter
rendered as BatDiv 3), which had been stalwart companions of Akagi’s for the
last six months, were excluded from the scorn heaped on the slower
battlewagons. Yamato might be pretty to look at, but Akagi’s men knew, and
everyone else in the anchorage knew, that the carriers, in particular these four
carriers, were the Imperial Navy’s superstars. They were the Navy’s samurai
sword, the gleaming blade that had humbled Japan’s enemies at Pearl Harbor
and across the breadth of the Pacific; the finest naval aviation force in the world.

1-2: Aircraft carrier Akagi in Sukumo Bay, April 1939. (Naval Historical Center)

Akagi was flagship of Carrier Division 1 (Dai-ichi K k Sentai, referred to
hereafter as CarDiv 1).2 She flew the flag of Vice Admiral Nagumo Chuichi,
commander of First Air Fleet and its tactical incarnation, the First Mobile
Striking Force (Dai-ichi Kid Butai)3 Akagi was enormous, at 855 feet the
longest carrier in the Imperial Navy, displacing more than 41,000 tons. Her
architecture immediately betrayed her as a hybrid–a carrier constructed on top of
what had originally been intended as a capital ship. Her lower hull was all sleek
battle cruiser, its most prominent feature being her massive, rakish bow. It was a
bow built for speed, not seakeeping–a huge meat cleaver of a prow. Near the
stern lingered another vestige of her original design; six casemated eight-inch
guns, set three to a side down near the waterline. Constructed at a time when no
one was sure how carriers would operate with the battlefleet, these weapons had
been intended to help Akagi fend off enemy cruisers. Now, they were simply
wasted displacement.
Above the main deck, her clean lines quickly gave way to a crazy quilt of
upper works enclosing her hangars. Her clifflike sides sported a maze of
catwalks, huge grills covering engine ventilator intakes, and a forest of slanting
supports for her walkways, gun galleries, and fire-control equipment. A
gargantuan downswept funnel sprouted from the ship’s starboard side. Her
improbably high flight deck towered six stories above the ocean’s surface. Yet,
despite the mishmash appearance, she had a curious balance and power in her
lines. She wasn’t a pretty ship, but she wasn’t to be trifled with, either.
It was Akagi’s thirty-one-knot speed that had first recommended her to the
Japanese as a carrier. When the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 was signed,
Akagi was still on the building ways. Instead of being scrapped, she and her
sister, Amagi, had been slated for conversion to carriers in much the same
fashion that the Americans had converted battle cruisers Lexington and
Saratoga. Both navies had tentatively decided–through the operations of their
respective carrier prototypes, H sh and Langley–that they needed larger
carriers than they currently had, with bigger flight decks and a healthy margin of
speed. Battle cruisers, with their size and swiftness, were perfect for the job.
As a result, work on Akagi had been stopped long enough to redraw her
plans. What emerged was almost bizarre–a design with three flight decks
forward to allow simultaneous takeoffs of multiple types of aircraft, supported
by three separate aircraft hangars. Her conversion also proved enormously
expensive–at ¥53,000,000 ($36.45 million), she was by far the most costly
warship the Imperial Navy had ever built.4 Not only that, but within eight years
of her commissioning, it had been decided that her original triple flight deck
configuration was unusable, owing to the ever-increasing weight (and hence
takeoff room required) of modern carrier aircraft. She reentered the yards in
1935 for another expensive refit.
She emerged in 1938 with a full-length flight deck and an island on her port
side. Akagi and Hiry were the only carriers in the world whose islands were
located to port. This unorthodox configuration had come about as the result of
design studies in the mid-1930s that had suggested that turbulence over the flight
deck aft (which affected aircraft during landing) could be reduced by moving the
island away from the ship’s exhaust gases. In the event, the port-side
arrangement actually made things somewhat worse, but there was no helping
that now.
This was not to say that Akagi hadn’t been useful during her first eight
years–far from it. It was on board her and Kaga that Japanese naval aviation had
largely been created. Japanese carrier doctrine had been predicated on Akagi’s
capabilities; she was the first Japanese vessel that possessed the size, speed, and
aircraft-handling facilities to justify being called a true carrier. Even now, as the
oldest of the four carriers in harbor,5 she was arguably still the most useful–fast
enough to keep up with almost any battle force, yet larger and better protected
than her smaller compatriots in Carrier Division 2 (hereafter CarDiv 2). Only the
spanking new Sh kaku and Zuikaku clearly eclipsed her.
As it happened, Akagi would be sailing under a new skipper for this
operation. The tall and angular Captain Hasegawa Kiichi, veteran of the Pearl
Harbor attack, had been relieved by Captain Aoki Taijiro, fifty-two. Aoki was a
spare, compact man who sported a trim little mustache. Most recently he had
been the commander of a floatplane training squadron–not exactly a glamorous
assignment–although he had commanded the seaplane carrier Mizuho
previously. This was his first combat posting, making him the only carrier
commander in Kid Butai with no battle experience.
 However Akagi’s crew was well stocked with experienced officers.
Undoubtedly the most important of these as far as the flight operations was
concerned was her air officer (hik ch ), Commander Masuda Shogo. The hik
ch was in charge of orchestrating both the flight deck and the hangar decks. He
also directed the ship’s combat air patrol aircraft when they were aloft. It was his
job to ensure that the ship was capable of carrying out the captain’s orders–to
arm, launch, and recover aircraft when required. Masuda, the father of four
daughters, was not a flamboyant individual, but he was highly capable, having
been with the ship since the beginning of the war.
Akagi’s sistership, Amagi, had never joined the fleet. She was wrecked on
the ways during the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. Lacking any further battle
cruiser hulls, the Navy had selected a battleship hull scheduled to be scrapped
under the Washington Naval Treaty. Kaga was thus saved from the scrapyard
and towed instead to Yokosuka to be completed as a carrier. The same lengthy
building time (and astronomical cost) as Akagi had preceded her commissioning
in March 1928.

1-3: Aircraft carrier Kaga, post-reconstruction. (Photo courtesy Michael
Wenger)

Kaga, too, had initially been designed with triple flight decks, but she
lacked Akagfs speed–her twenty-five knots was barely sufficient to hold station
with her faster division mate. By 1934 it was clear that she was the least
serviceable of the pair, and she went into the yards for a refit. In the process,
Yokosuka’s yard workers ripped the guts out of her propulsion plant and
completely re-engined her. She emerged in 1935 with better hangar facilities but
still far from speedy, although new engines and a slight lengthening of her hull
had raised its speed another three knots. Her flight deck, though, was generously
sized, towering above the water much like Akagi, and making for a wide, dry
platform for takeoffs and landings. All in all, Kaga had an appealing, homey
dumpiness about her. She was, by all accounts, a happy ship to serve on board.
Kaga’s commander, Captain Okada Jisaku, was forty-eight years old, the
same age as the skippers of both S ry and Hiry . A severe, comely man, he had
been associated with aviation for much of his career. Starting as a squadron
commander, he later rose to command seaplane carrier Notoro and later the light
carrier Ry j . Following a posting as a commander in the Navy Technical
Department (kansei honbu), he came on board Kaga in September 1941.
Okada had just inherited a new hik ch , Commander Amagai Takahisa,
who had been carrier Hiry S hik ch since the outbreak of hostilities. Amagai
was apparently something of a bumpkin. One fighter pilot who knew him
described him as both artless and rather sloppy in appearance.6 For all that,
though, his simplicity of character made him approachable, and he was always
happy to talk with anyone and everyone.
Further off, but still easily visible from the flight decks Kaga and Akagi,
were the two ships of CarDiv 2–Hiry and S ry . Whereas the ships of CarDiv 1
were both notable for their size, CarDiv 2 was characterized by speed. S ryy ,
the elder of the pair (having joined the fleet in 1937), was the progenitor of
Japan’s standard fleet carrier design. Built around a cruiser-style hull and power
plant, which generated a prodigious 152,000 shaft horsepower, she was capable
of cranking out thirty-five knots. She was the fastest aircraft carrier in the world
when she was launched. In fact, she could outrun Kaga at only 40 percent
power.7

1-4: Aircraft carrier S ry ’s at Kure, 29 December 1937. This shot, not
published before in the West, offers a fine study of Soryyu’s port side on her
commissioning date. Note the sailor engaged in maintenance work hanging
silhouetted under her flight deck forward, near one of the flight deck supports on
the ship’s bow. (Photo courtesy KK Bestsellers)

Unlike CarDiv 1’s ships, S ry had been designed from the keel up as a
carrier. Her hangar decks, instead of simply being plopped down on top of an
existing hull like Akagi’s and Kaga’s, had been smoothly faired into the
structure of the hull itself, making her profile lower, her lines cleaner, and her
flight deck unfortunately wetter. S ry seemed almost out of place next to the
hulking members of CarDiv 1–she was small, lean, almost elegant. However, her
diminutive size and delicate features betrayed her weaknesses–light
construction, and a near-total lack of armor. Thus far, though, her defensive
characteristics had never been tested.
S ry was commanded by Captain Yanagimoto Ryusaku. Yanagimoto was
an intensely handsome man, possessing high cheekbones, a delicate mouth, and
wide-set, intelligent eyes. His credentials were equally impressive, having
previously served as a naval attaché, a Naval War College instructor, and as
head of the intelligence section of the Naval General Staff. His reputation in the
fleet was that of both a gentleman and a warrior. He was revered for his self-
confidence, fairness, and courteous manners to both peers and underlings alike–
no small feat in a navy ruled by iron discipline. He and his hik ch , Commander
Kusumoto Ikuto, had been with S ry since before Pearl Harbor, making them
unquestionably the most experienced air operations duo in the fleet.
S ry ’s compatriot, Hiry , was really only a stepsister. Entering service in
1939, she shared much of S ry ’s general layout, but with some notable
differences. Her hull was a bit wider, and her island was located to port like
Akagi’s. Her bow had been plated up an extra deck, flattening her sheer forward.
As a result, she had boxier, more severe lines than S ry , although she shared
her sister’s speed. Hiry was currently the flagship of the fiery Rear Admiral
Yamaguchi Tamon, commander of CarDiv 2. Until a month earlier, he had
flown his flag in S ry , but in early May Yamaguchi had decided to avail
himself of Hiry ’s more commodious command spaces. Her bridge was the
largest and most modern of the four carriers, and therefore more convenient for
housing the admiral’s staff.

1-5: Captain Yanagimoto Ry saku, the highly popular commander of carrier S
ry . (Photo courtesy Michael Wenger)

Hiry was commanded by Captain Kaku Tomeo. Kaku, like Kaga’s
Captain Okada, was an early proponent of airpower. As early as 1927, he had
been participating in the development of the Navy’s air doctrine, first as a
student at the Naval War College, and later as an air group commander and
ship’s captain. Kaku had the distinction of being the only aviator among the four
carrier commanders in Kid Butai. He was an intimidating figure; a burly man
whose mouth fell naturally into a ferocious scowl. Kaku’s new hik ch was
Commander Kawaguchi Susumu, a former fighter pilot.
In addition to Akagi, Kaga, S ry , and Hiry , two other carriers ought to
have been sortieing this morning as well–the brand new Sh kaku and Zuikaku of
Carrier Division Five (hereafter CarDiv 5). CarDiv 5 was an integral part of Kid
Butai, having been incorporated into Nagumo’s battle force upon Zuikaku’s
commissioning in September 1941. Though they were inexperienced vessels,
their large size and excellent aircraft-handling facilities had made them
indispensable for December’s Pearl Harbor operation.8 Under the command of
Rear Admiral Hara Chuichi, they had operated with Kid Butai continuously
since then. However, in mid-April, CarDiv 5 had been detached to support the
Japanese landings against Port Moresby in New Guinea, slated for early May.
There, on 7–8 May in the Coral Sea north of Australia, they had been put
through the wringer. An American carrier force had appeared unexpectedly, and
in the ensuing battle, the two yearlings had suffered heavily. Sh kaku had
sustained three bomb hits, knocking her out of the battle. Zuikaku had escaped
physical damage, but her air group had been shredded. Both carriers were now at
Kure. Sh kaku had made port on 17 May, having run a gauntlet of American
submarines (and very nearly capsizing in the process as a result of the rough
treatment on her damaged bow). Zuikaku had docked four days later. Sh kaku
would ultimately spend the latter half of June in dry dock. Zuikaku was
nominally operational, but her air group was not and would not be fully
reconstituted for months. Thus, both carriers were out of the picture for the
current operation.

1-6: Aircraft carrier Hiry , 5 July 1939. This photo, not seen widely in the West,
shows Hiry on the date of her commissioning. Note the large retractable crane
raised on her flight deck aft–a feature not often seen in photos of these vessels.
(Photo courtesy KK Bestsellers)

If the rank and file on board Kid Butai were worried about this diminution
of their strength, they weren’t showing it. Why should they? Nagumo’s
remaining carriers were an elite formation with or without CarDiv 5. Kid Butai
had ranged across the Pacific Ocean during the first six months of the war,
wreaking havoc, running up a nearly unbroken string of victories, and
humiliating Allied naval forces. During Kid Butai’s opening assault on Pearl
Harbor, they had sunk or disabled the better part of the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s
battleship force and crushed U.S. airpower on Hawaii. Shortly afterward, S ry
and Hiry had provided air cover for the second invasion of Wake Island.9
Following this, Kid Butai refitted briefly in Japan before moving into southern
waters to cover operations in Malaya and the Indies. On 19 February 1942, as
part of the opening moves against Java, the Striking Force had launched a major
raid against the northern Australian harbor of Port Darwin, causing heavy
damage and effectively shutting down the port.
In early April 1942, Kid Butai (composed of Akagi, S ry , Hiry , Sh
kaku, and Zuikaku)10 raided the Indian Ocean. The Japanese carriers launched
attacks against the British bases of Colombo and Trincomalee on Ceylon.
Colombo was hit on the morning of 5 April, causing heavy damage to its port
facilities. More important, in the afternoon the Japanese located the heavy
cruisers Dorsetshire and Cornwall fleeing the scene of the action southward. The
Japanese quickly dispatched these vessels with a devastating dive-bomber attack.
Nagumo’s force had retired briefly to the east, returning on 9 April to attack
Trincomalee. In the process, they caught the carrier Hermes and a destroyer and
dispatched them in similar fashion before retiring. These raids exposed the
enormous gap between Japanese and British naval aviation. For the first time in
centuries, the Royal Navy was impotent in the face of a foe that had clearly
moved ahead of British practice in a crucial area of naval combat.11

1-7: Captain Kaku Tomeo, Hiry ’s skipper. (Photo courtesy Michael Wenger)

Kid Butai then returned to Japan for much-needed rest and refitting.
Nagumo’s ships had been in near-constant operations for four and a half months
and had traversed nearly a third of the globe. Though aircraft losses had been
relatively light by the standards of a global conflict, they had still been a serious
drain. New replacements needed to be integrated into the air formations and
trained. Similarly, the carriers needed dry-dock time and maintenance. However,
if the crews were looking forward to a leisurely period of R&R in the delightful
city of Hiroshima, they were gravely disappointed. Returning to Hashirajima on
22 April, the carriers had immediately been plunged into frantic preparations for
the next sortie. Each ship had been taken in for a quick refit, and then began
reprovisioning. There had been precious little time for the men to enjoy liberty,
though the ferry ride was short, and Hiroshima well liked for its May flower
festival, not to mention its tasty food and pretty girls. Now, a scant month after
returning, they were getting ready to leave again. The Navy’s work was never
done, the men joked.

At 0600, Akagi raised her ensign and signaled–“Commence sortie as scheduled.”

One by one, Kid Butai fell into line and began parading through the anchorage.
Light cruiser Nagara headed the column, leading her destroyer squadron.
Cruiser Division 8’s (hereafter CruDiv 8) flagship, Tone, followed, with sister
ship, Chikuma, next, followed by battleships Haruna and Kirishima. At the end
of the proud line came Akagi, Kaga, Hiry , and S ry .
Coincidentally, 27 May was also Navy Day, the anniversary of Admiral
Togo Heihachiro’s spectacular victory over the Russians in 1905–a good omen
for victory if ever there was one. Across Japan, the morning dailies were already
trumpeting the accomplishments of the Imperial Navy. The English edition of
the Japan Times and Advertiser proclaimed that “this year, Navy Day is not a
day of mere remembrance, not a mere reminder; it is a day of fulfillment. The
Japanese Navy has not only duplicated the exploits of 37 years ago, it has
repeated it [sic] time and again and in an unbelievably greater scale. Navy Day
this year is the climax for which all Navy Days of past years have been in
preparation.” The article concluded that “Japan stands today as the premier naval
power of the world. It may well presage the rise of Japan in the future history of
the world to a position comparable to that which Britain has occupied in the
past.”12 It was a heady vision. Indeed, no newspaper reporter who might have
had the privilege of witnessing this morning’s sortie would have faulted the
splendor of the spectacle spread before him. On the decks of every ship in the
bay, white-clad crewmen packed the railings. The men on board the warships
still at anchor cheered lustily as Nagumo’s force promenaded in slow splendor.
Kid Butai cheered them back. Though most of them had no idea of the
particulars of what was afoot, Operation MI, the assault on the island of
Midway, was now under way.
On Akagi’s bridge stood the man on whom the weight of command for the
mission was laid. Vice Admiral Nagumo Chuichi, commander of the First
Mobile Striking Force, was small, gruff, and fifty-five years of age.13 A sailor’s
sailor, he had held numerous seagoing commands on his way up through the
ranks. A torpedo expert by training, as a young officer, he had garnered a
reputation for dash and intelligence and was considered a rising star within the
Navy. Somewhere along the way, though, his earlier drive had been leeched
away. Perhaps it was simply the onset of premature old age–once an avid kendo
fencer, bouts of arthritis now left him in considerable pain. He wore the
command of Kid Butai uneasily. An official photograph, taken of him in a
dress uniform dripping in medals, seems to reveal a man distinctly
uncomfortable with the image of an admiral, staring with muted supplication at
the camera. Perhaps he simply longed for the simpler days, when he was a
lower-level commander and spent his time at sea, out of the limelight. The
complexity of the new mode of aerial warfare clearly was beyond his ken.
Nagumo’s true personality is difficult to pin down. It is probable that he,
like many men, had different faces for different audiences. His youngest son
remembered him as a serious, somewhat brooding father. His ambitions to have
his two sons follow him into the Navy were destined for disappointment.
Nagumo was all business and rarely joked at home, seemingly always consumed
with the concerns of a career Navy officer. He was often at sea, leaving his three
children for long periods of time. To his junior officers, he often appeared
friendly, evincing the sort of fatherly familiarity that his own son apparently
rarely saw. He was always willing to lend them a helping hand and provide
advice. He was also given to delegating responsibility to younger men,
sometimes too much so. His peers in the admiral’s ranks apparently considered
him a mixed bag at best; competent, but given to drunken bravado. The
mercurial Admiral Ugaki Matome, chief of staff for Combined Fleet, disliked
Nagumo intensely, and in the privacy of his diary ascribed to him all manner of
mental shortcomings, from panics and nerves to simple stupidity.
It is unlikely that Nagumo had friendly relations with his chief, Admiral
Yamamoto. Yamamoto was a noted member of the faction within the Navy that
had supported the Washington Naval Treaty. Nagumo had been a member of the
militaristic Fleet Faction, which opposed the treaty as if it were a national
hemlock. Given that Yamamoto’s life had been threatened by extremist
members of the Fleet Faction, it can be safely speculated that each man loathed
the other.
Yamamoto could not have been happy that it was Nagumo who was put in
charge of First Air Fleet when it was formed in April 1941. This new entity,
which concentrated all the large flight decks in the fleet into a single tactical
unit, needed to be commanded by a vice admiral. Unfortunately, the more air-
minded Vice Admiral Ozawa Jisaburo, who had been one of the primary
advocates behind First Air Fleet’s creation, had just been assigned to a different
post, leaving Nagumo next in line. According to the Navy’s strict rules of
seniority, he was given a command for which he was basically ill suited. It
wasn’t that Nagumo was a bad officer. Rather, he was largely passive and not
terribly innovative, at a moment in history when adaptability would be key to the
Navy’s fortunes. Nagumo had no real affinity for the supremely powerful
weapon that was thrust into his hands.

1-8: Vice Admiral Nagumo Chuichi, commander of First Mobile Striking Force.
(Naval Historical Center)

However, by the time of Midway, Nagumo’s name was also inextricably
linked to the successes of Kid Butai. Though Yamamoto had rebuked him over
his performance at Pearl Harbor, he wasn’t in any position to remove him from
command. When such an action had been suggested by a member of
Yamamoto’s staff, he had replied that such an action would “be the same as
killing him. It would be the same thing as asking him to commit hara-kiri.”
Besides, such an action would have had to be ratified by the Naval General Staff
in any case, and it was known within the circles of Combined Fleet that Naval
GHQ could not and would not approve such an action.14
It’s possible, too, that Nagumo’s passivity may have been somewhat
appealing to the commander in chief. Admiral Yamamoto was used to having his
way and already had had plenty of internal battles to fight with the Navy
establishment in 1941 when trying to get approval for Pearl Harbor. Having a
strong-willed commander presiding over the primary implement of that strategic
vision could have been quite inconvenient. Yamamoto liked original thinking, as
long as it was his, or if it emanated from individuals he could directly control. In
Nagumo he found a commander who, though grudging, was at least not inclined
to resist his orders. Nagumo grumbled, but he did what he was told.

1-9: Rear Admiral Kusaka Ry nosuke, First Air Fleet chief of staff. (Photo
courtesy Donald Goldstein)

That Kid Butai had won, and won big, for the first six months of the war
was no real indication of Nagumo’s prowess or growth as a carrier commander.
At the beginning of the Pacific War, the Japanese Navy had found itself within
the happy confluence of three key forces–weak opponents, possession of a
superior weapon system (in the form of high-quality, massed naval airpower),
and an effective doctrine for its employ. None of Kid Butai’s foes had an
effective reply to the challenge posed by six carriers and some four hundred
aircraft that could appear and disappear at will. Japanese planes and pilots were
so markedly superior that apparently nothing could stand before them. But if
Nagumo used this honeymoon period to gain a deeper understanding of the
workings of carrier warfare, it does not show in his subsequent actions. Nagumo
was merely the ringleader of this traveling circus; he had hardly anything to do
with its success.
Nagumo’s right-hand man was his chief of staff, Rear Admiral Kusaka
Ryunosuke. Originally a gunnery officer, he had been posted to Kasumigaura
Air Group in 1926, whereupon his career became totally devoted to aviation.
Though not a flier himself, he had commanded both the H sh and Akagi before
being promoted to rear admiral in 1937.15 Kusaka was, by all accounts, devoted
to his chief and became something of an apologist for him after the war.16 They
were both cautious by nature, although Kusaka’s personality was more placid
and philosophical than that of his dour commander. A Zen Buddhist, he was
apparently a skilled negotiator and conciliator. However, there is little to suggest
that he possessed an incisive mind. His lectures on aerial tactics at Kasumigaura
were remembered by the aviators there as being not so much on aerial tactics as
on “aerial philosophy.”17 He was, in short, something of a dilettante–a man who
recognized the potential of naval aviation and wanted to be associated with it,
but whose training and personal insights into airpower were limited. That, in
combination with his rather laid back personality, meant that he was unlikely to
take bold actions when the need arose.

1-10: Rear Admiral Yamaguchi Tamon, commander of Carrier Division 2.
(Photo courtesy Donald Goldstein)

Kid Butai’s other ranking carrier admiral was Rear Admiral Yamaguchi
Tamon. The commander of CarDiv 2, Yamaguchi was a much different man
than his superior. Five years younger than Nagumo, he seemed ages more
youthful and energetic. Photographs of Yamaguchi reveal an odd mixture of
features, with high eyebrows, close-set eyes, and an almost feline appearance.
He was widely seen within the fleet as being the logical successor to Admiral
Yamamoto. He had an impeccable pedigree for higher command–a Naval Staff
College graduate, schooling abroad at Princeton University, and extensive sea
service. Yamaguchi had worked his way up through command of light cruiser
Isuzu, heavy cruiser Atago, and eventually battleship Ise. He had been a member
of Japan’s naval delegation to the London Naval Conference in 1929 and had
also served as naval attaché in Washington, D.C. During the conflict in China,
he had commanded the Navy’s First Combined Air Group and directed its
bombing campaign against central China. Though not a pilot, he was respected
in the aviation community and had been a vocal supporter of its growth.
Yamaguchi appears to have been quite social, which may have furthered his
career. An American naval officer who met Yamaguchi in 1923 when he was
still a lieutenant, observed that he appeared “to prefer pleasure to work.”
Yamaguchi was quite enthusiastic about his American alma mater, Princeton,
where he apparently preferred “horses, tennis, golf and liquor to study.” The
American went on to observe that Yamaguchi “did not give the impression of
being well founded professionally, but would be better suited [to diplomacy.]”18
Yet, despite what his vitae or American social acquaintances might have
said, in the final analysis, Yamaguchi fell into the category of man that Chihaya
Masatake, himself a commander in the Imperial Navy and a shrewd observer of
its failings, would later term the “Oriental Hero Type”–“rough-hewn, [and]
lacking precision of thought and a clear-cut sense of responsibility in the western
sense of the word.”19 He was, in short, the epitome of the traditional samurai–
hot tempered, aggressive to a fault; a man who valued honor as the ultimate
virtue.
It is clear that Yamaguchi had misgivings about his more passive superior,
and indeed of First Air Fleet’s staff in general. Admiral Ugaki recorded in his
diary that Yamaguchi had complained to him on several occasions that “First Air
Fleet headquarters had never taken steps to expand its achievement in battle,
grasping an opportunity to do so, or to cope with a change of circumstances.” He
confided to Ugaki that what was missing in First Air Fleet was leadership: “The
commander in chief [Nagumo] doesn’t say a word, and both the chief of staff
[Kusaka] and the senior staff officer [Captain ishi, Kusaka’s right-hand man]
lack boldness.20 In his complaints, Yamaguchi found a receptive ear, for Ugaki
was hardly impressed with Nagumo himself and urged Yamaguchi to continue
recommending his views as much as possible in the future.”21

1-11: Commander Genda Minoru, staff air officer of First Air Fleet. (Author’s
collection)

If true brilliance was to be found in Kid Butai, it lay further down the
chain of command. Nagumo’s air officer, Commander Genda Minoru, was
commonly recognized as the house genius. Like his commander, he wore his
mantle somewhat uneasily, but for entirely different reasons. There was no
questioning his air credentials. Genda had first made his name as a highly skilled
fighter pilot, eventually going so far as to organize a naval acrobatic team to tour
Japan. After his run with the “Genda Circus” (as it came to be known), he had
served as an air staff officer in China, flight instructor, and an assistant naval
attaché for good measure. Genda was gifted, insightful, and had a firm grasp
over the workings of carrier warfare. Indeed, he was largely responsible for
creating and shaping the force now under Nagumo’s command. He had been
handpicked by Yamamoto for his position, and thus far in the war he had
performed well. It was Genda who had been the architect of massed naval
airpower within the fleet, and it was his and Vice Admiral Ozawa’s constant
nagging of the top brass that had finally prompted Yamamoto to officially create
the First Air Fleet.
Nagumo, with his penchant for delegating to talented juniors, essentially let
Genda run the show when it came to planning air operations. As far as Genda
was concerned, this was a mixed blessing. While he was confident in his abilities
(to the point of arrogance, according to Kusaka), he was also aware of his
limitations.22 Nagumo rarely critiqued his plans. Genda would have preferred
having someone supervising him to ensure that he didn’t overlook the obvious.
Unfortunately, there was no one else with the necessary insight into aerial
matters to do so. The net result was that air operations for Kid Butai were
disproportionately the responsibility of a single individual.

Nagumo’s warships left Hashirajima traveling south, passing between the islands
of Yashirojima and Nakajima before turning into the broad Iyo Nada waterway.
The heavily cultivated islands of the Inland Sea are verdant and steep sided,
rising spectacularly from the blue waters. Fishermen in their boats paused to
wave at the grim warships as they cruised along. Kid Butai made its way
toward the north entrance of the Bungo Suid , the key waterway that separates
Shikoku from the southern island of Ky sh . Entering the narrow channel in
single file, the force plowed south-southeast toward the open ocean, clearing
Bungo Suid around noon.
Kid Butai’s screening vessels began shaking themselves out into an alert
cruising disposition. Nagumo’s escorts for this mission were well known to the
force as a whole. The fast battleships Haruna and Kirishima (the second section
of BatDiv 3) were along to provide whatever heavy gunfire might be needed.
Both ships were old but had been refitted several times during their long lives.
Originally constructed as battle cruisers, they could still crank out thirty-one
knots, and as such were perfect heavy escorts for Kid Butai’s carriers. Each
mounted eight fourteen-inch guns and relatively heavy antiaircraft armament as
well. They were in no way equivalent to a modern fast battleship but could
certainly stand up against a heavy cruiser, which was their primary screening
role. They could also be called on to initiate a night action against any American
forces that might be in the neighborhood, if the situation required it.
Nagumo’s screen commander, Rear Admiral Abe Hiroaki, flew his flag in
the heavy cruiser Tone. Both Tone and Chikuma had been built as adjuncts to the
carrier forces. Each mounted their eight eight-inch guns in four twin turrets
forward, leaving the entire rear deck available for floatplane operations. Each
ship normally carried five aircraft, although on this occasion Tone was missing
one of hers.23 The role of these cruisers was to act as scouts for the fleet, through
their floatplanes, thereby freeing up the carrier aircraft for offensive operations.
The light cruiser Nagara, flagship of Rear Admiral Kimura Susumu,
commander of Destroyer Squadron 10, directed a screen of eleven
destroyers–Arashi, Nowaki, Hagikaze, Maikaze, Kazagumo, Y gumo,
Makigumo, Isokaze, Urakaze, Hamakaze, and Tanikaze. Nagara was an older
5,500-ton cruiser and wasn’t much help in a fight. But her role was to act as
flagship for the destroyers in her charge, which is where the real surface combat
power of the force lay. Each of the destroyers was a new fleet unit, and all of
them were armed to the teeth with five-inch guns and the feared Type 93
torpedo.
Nagumo’s force settled onto a course taking it southeast into the broad
Pacific. They would continue in this fashion for the rest of the day before turning
east that night and heading toward the objective. The coastline of Shikoku was
fading into the distance. Tsuchiya Ryosaku, a 3rd class seaman from Shizuoka
province, still four months shy of his sixteenth birthday, may have had a chance
to look over Akagi’s railing one last time as the shore vanished behind him.
Fifty-seven-year-old Hodate Ken, a lieutenant commander from Kagoshima,
might well have done the same from S ry s bridge.24 They were destined to be,
respectively, the youngest and oldest of the 3,057 Japanese who would never see
their homeland again as a result of Operation MI.25 Within ten days, they and the
proud carriers they served on would be lying at the bottom of the cold Pacific.
2

Genesis of a Battle

Whereas the spectacle surrounding Nagumo’s sortie six hours earlier had
been gala, the mood among his senior officers was quite the opposite. This was
not a popular operation, particularly among the staff members of Kid Butai,
who worried that Combined Fleet’s planning staff was sending them on a fool’s
errand. Nagumo had been withdrawn and apathetic during the planning phase.1
Admirals Kusaka, Yamaguchi, and Kond , along with Captain Kaku of Hiry
had all been downright hostile to it almost from the outset.2 Commander Genda,
for his part, while not opposed to seeking a decisive battle with the Americans
off Midway, also felt that the mission’s operational planning left much to be
desired. Indeed, to many fleet officers, Operation MI, and its concurrent northern
counterpart, Operation AL (aimed at the occupation of the Aleutian Islands),
appeared to have been simply thrown together. Appearances, in this case, were
not deceptive.
Operations MI and AL were the unhappy outcome of a lack of real strategic
direction on the part of the Japanese military, and the Imperial Navy in
particular, in early 1942.3 To a large degree, these difficulties stemmed from
Japan’s unforeseen successes during the first four months of war. By March
1942, Japan had either attained all of her initial objectives or was in sight of
doing so. Malaya had already been captured, after a brilliant campaign that had
seen the fall of the great British bastion of Singapore on February 15, 1942. The
Dutch East Indies, including the rich resources of Borneo and Java, had survived
less than a month longer. The key to securing the Indies had been a series of
savage naval battles near Java. There, the Imperial Navy had crushed the
combined squadrons of the American, British, Dutch, and Australian Navies (the
ill-starred ABDA command) and then hunted down their fleeing remnants. In
addition to capturing the oil and rubber that had been the reason for going to war
in the first place, Japan had also ripped apart the last line of defense in front of
Australia. The Imperial Navy’s fleet was now in a position both to raid
Australia’s northern coast and to make moves into the Indian Ocean.
 Similarly, the Japanese campaign in Burma was well in hand and would see
the expulsion of the British by the end of April. In the Philippines, the initial
landings had gone smoothly, and Manila had fallen on January 2, 1942.
American and Philippine forces had retreated to the Bataan Peninsula and were
still holding out, but the outcome was a foregone conclusion, because the U.S.
Navy was in no position to relieve the siege. The entirety of the west central
Pacific basin, including the American possessions of Guam and Wake, had
fallen in the opening weeks of the conflict. Further south, the Japanese had
secured the important port of Rabaul (located on the northern tip of New Britain)
in January. From there, they threatened to make further inroads into New Guinea
and ultimately to develop offensives to the south and east that could potentially
cut communications between Australia and the United States.

2-1: The Japanese Empire and the Battle of Midway. This map shows the extent
of Japanese conquests as of approximately March 1942, as well as the outlines of
Yamamoto’s decisive battlefield.

Thus, on the face of it, Japan had all but achieved all of the goals that she
had gone to war for. She had expelled the white colonial powers and secured the
southern resource areas in the Indies that would, in time, supply her with all the
oil and strategic minerals that her new Pacific empire required. With her earlier
conquests in China, she now had under her control a vast territory, stretching
from Manchuria in the north, through central China and French Indochina into
Malaya and Burma in the southwest. From there, her possessions ran eastward
down the line of islands stretching from Sumatra all the way to Rabaul, and
proceeded north from there through the stronghold of Truk all the way to the
Kuriles. In the space of a few short months, the Japanese had thus secured for
themselves one of the largest empires in the history of mankind.
Japan now stood temporarily supreme in the Pacific. Dutch and British
naval power had for all intents and purposes been eliminated from the area, with
the Royal Navy having retreated to Ceylon and India. The U.S. Navy had been
humbled at Pearl Harbor and bloodied again in the Philippines and around Java.
Though unbeaten, it had been incapable of disrupting Japanese offensive actions
in the Pacific and was currently able to do little more than conduct hit-and-run
raids against Japanese outposts. It had not yet recovered the ability to launch
strategically meaningful operations of its own–it could only react to Japanese
moves. The Japanese held the initiative everywhere.

The logical question that arose in the ranks of the Japanese military’s planners as
a result of their success was how to use that initiative. It was to this strategic
debate that Japan’s leadership turned its attentions, beginning as early as January
1942. As it developed, there was widespread disagreement over this subject, not
only between the Army and Navy, but within the Navy itself as well. But
Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, the commander in chief of Combined Fleet, was
determined to have the final say in Pacific war strategy.
Yamamoto, the most controversial and important figure in the history of the
Japanese Navy, was a man who defies easy description.4 He was widely
portrayed during the war both at home and abroad as a brilliant commander.
However, his reputation within the fleet itself was less clear-cut, despite his
considerable prewar achievements. Born to humble origins, he combined
intelligence with an intense drive to better his circumstances. Along the way he
had acquired a taste for the creature comforts of rank, which he would retain
until his death. Charismatic and capable, he was also an ambivalent husband and
father, enjoying gambling and spending time with geishas instead. Taken
together, he was a man of notable strengths and weaknesses, though his
personality flaws were not those that would have been detrimental within the
social organization of the Navy.

2-2: Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, commander in chief, Combined Fleet.
Ambitious and politically adroit, he was determined to have the final say in
Japanese naval strategy formulation. (Author’s collection)

What is surprising about Yamamoto is that he had managed to rise nearly to

the pinnacle of his profession despite having been a standard-bearer for some
very unpopular causes. He was a supporter of the Washington and London Naval
Treaties, within a Navy whose majority considered those agreements to be a slap
in the face of national pride, because they pegged Japan’s naval forces at a level
below those of the United States and Great Britain. He was an advocate of naval
aviation at a time when the Navy still worshipped at the temple of the big-gun
warship. Finally, he was an opponent of Japan’s alliance with Nazi Germany,
whose martial prowess and antipathy toward the Soviet state were widely
admired throughout the Japanese military. Given these facts, two general
conclusions can be reached about Yamamoto. First, he must have combined a
high degree of confidence and competence along with the survival skills
necessary to have reached his present position. Second, he had undoubtedly
made a lot of enemies. The forthcoming strategic planning process would swell
their ranks still further.
Assuming command of Combined Fleet in 1939, Yamamoto had imposed
his stamp on it in a way that no commander had done since the days of the
revered Admiral T g . To his detractors, it must have seemed that Yamamoto
was determined to make Combined Fleet his own personal fiefdom. His staff
became a haven for unorthodox thinkers, including many of the airpower
supporters within the Navy. This was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it is
undeniable that Yamamoto’s advocacy had brought about a greater reliance on
naval aviation within the fleet, which had subsequently served Japan well. On
the other hand, Yamamoto and his staff saw themselves engaged in a perpetual
struggle against the naval establishment.
Not surprisingly, he and his officers were unpopular at Imperial General
Headquarters (IGHQ) in Tokyo, which thought (somewhat justifiably) that
Combined Fleet’s commander and cronies had a bit of an attitude problem.
Worse was yet to follow. As war approached, Yamamoto laid the groundwork
for what was in effect a coup against IGHQ over who was to set strategic
direction for the fleet. In so doing, he sowed the seeds of future military defeat
by destroying the checks and balances within the Navy’s policymaking
processes.
Yamamoto had insisted in 1941 that if Japan chose to capture the resources
of the south through war, that war also had to include the United States.
Furthermore, he believed that the U.S. Navy had to be dealt a crippling blow at
the outset so as to buy time for Japan to carry out its operations in the southern
campaign areas without opposition. In this view, he was opposed by several
senior members of the Naval General Staff, including its head, Admiral Nagano
Osami. Nagano was of the opinion that the United States would find it very
difficult to go to war if Japan refrained from an outright attack. He reasoned
(correctly) that President Franklin D. Roosevelt would have a difficult time
rallying sufficient support for a causus belli based only on Japanese attacks
against British and Dutch colonial holdings, as American popular opinion was
decidedly ambivalent about defending such interests.
Nagano had eventually lost the debate, even though his basic reasoning was
sound. Yamamoto had won on the basis of both his personal reputation, and his
willingness to use inelegant means to get his way. In the midst of the Pearl
Harbor debate, he had let it be known that he and the entire staff of Combined
Fleet were prepared to resign if his views were not confirmed.5 Nagano, given
the choice between acquiescing or confronting his wayward subordinate, had
backed down. In so doing, he essentially let Yamamoto hijack the Navy’s
strategic planning process and place it under the purview of Combined Fleet.
Yamamoto would later remark to his cohort Ugaki that, in his opinion, naval
headquarters seemed to have “no definite ideas” as to how to carry out the war.
Indeed, during a meeting in Tokyo on 5 December to brief the emperor,
Yamamoto had gone so far as to tell the chief of the Naval General Staff, as well
as the Navy minister, “not to interfere too much and thus set a bad precedent in
the navy.”6 This was, bluntly, a rather incredible state of affairs for any military
organization.
The Pearl Harbor attack (Hawaii sakusen) proved a spectacular success, at
least superficially. Although it had left some notable loose ends in its wake–
including the failure to sink any American aircraft carriers–it had resulted in
enough damage to the U.S. Navy that the Japanese greeted it as a great victory.
As a result, Yamamoto’s political clout within the Navy was considerably
enhanced, especially as one Japanese success piled on the next in the heady first
months of war. Wherever the Navy had gone, Yamamoto’s name by default had
gone with it. By early 1942, he was associated by the Japanese public with all
the fruits of victory that the Navy had won for the nation.
Having taken control over naval strategy, Yamamoto had no intention of
relinquishing his new perquisite. The Naval General Staff in Tokyo, of course,
had other ideas. Consequently, strategic formulation concerning future
operations was accompanied by a tug of war between Hashirajima and Tokyo.
However, Yamamoto already knew two things. First, his threat to resign had
already been effective once. Second, his own political clout had increased
dramatically since the inception of the war. Naval GHQ held no such cards.
A fractured internal policymaking process was only the first hurdle to the
Navy’s being able to fashion a reasonable set of follow-on operations in 1942.
The second major problem was that the Navy itself did not have unilateral say in
such matters. Any further territorial expansion required ground forces to capture
and garrison the conquests. The Navy had too few troops to do any real “heavy
lifting” of its own and therefore had to rely on the Army if it wanted to secure
important objectives. The Army recognized that it had an important say in such
matters, and it intended to use this leverage. Unfortunately, whereas most
nations’ interservice relationships range from bad to worse, Japan’s were mired
at the dysfunctional end of the spectrum. The Imperial Army and Navy loathed
each other, their interchanges being marked by suspicion, pettiness, and outright
hostility. Admiral Nagano’s penchant (real or feigned) for conveniently falling
asleep during joint Army/Navy liaison conferences was indicative of the overall
level of civility that prevailed between the two services.7
The Army was still largely focused on its private quagmire in China, which
had consumed the vast majority of its forces since July 1937. Furthermore, given
the Army’s heavy defeat at the hands of the Soviets during a series of violent
border clashes in Manchuria in the summer of 1939, it felt compelled to maintain
substantial forces in the area. Thus, it had been parsimonious in relinquishing
forces for the initial stage of war operations in the Pacific.
 In fact, only a shade over eleven divisions had been required to conquer the
entirety of the new Japanese empire. This represented perhaps a fifth of the
Army’s total manpower. Given that stinginess had apparently paid for itself in
the opening campaign, it was loath to release any more forces than it had to for
future operations. It was also determined to resist any operational concepts that
created open-ended manpower commitments.
In fairness to the Army, it rightly wanted to preserve its strength for further
actions against the Russians in Manchuria. Despite the mauling the Japanese had
been subjected to two years earlier, in late 1941 it looked as if the Russians
themselves were being overwhelmed. The Red Army had been continually
beaten by the Wehrmacht during the previous summer, and to all outward
appearances the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse. This reversal of
fortunes for the Soviet colossus meant that there might exist real opportunities
for the Japanese to seize more of Manchuria. But the net result was that the
Army’s attention was not fully engaged by the Pacific.
This tendency reflected fundamental differences between the Army and the
Navy about how the war was to be brought to a close. The Navy was steeped in a
tradition of seeking decisive battle with its foes. It believed that landing a single
roundhouse blow, if sufficiently powerful, would bring hostilities to a close. It
was the Navy’s fervent hope, therefore, that the war could be concluded in 1942.
The Army, however, held no such illusions, particularly against an opponent as
powerful as the United States. Instead, the Army was girding itself for a
protracted struggle. It was deeply suspicious of any attempts to increase the size
of Japan’s territorial holdings in the largely empty wastes of the Pacific,
knowing it didn’t have the strength to garrison every outpost. Instead, the Army
wished to fortify an outer shell as strongly as possible, preparing to make the
Americans pay an unacceptable price in blood when their inevitable
counterattacks began. As a result, the Army consistently resisted any notions that
looked likely to increase its troop commitments in the Pacific.
Thus, when the Navy began floating trial balloons during a series of joint
service consultations in the early part of 1942, the Army held important trump
cards. Lacking naval transport, it could not unilaterally initiate actions against
Americans. But by the same token, neither could the Navy, in that the Army had
no qualms in vetoing strategic avenues that appeared too risky or that created
open-ended commitments. This, then, was the treacherous landscape across
which Japan’s military leadership groped for a solution to their strategic
dilemmas. In such a poisonous political atmosphere, it is hardly surprising that
Japan put its carrier force to little strategically meaningful work during the
months of March and April 1942. While the internal debate over second-stage
war policy raged, the only operations that could be countenanced for Kid Butai
were by definition those that did not tread too decisively down any strategic
avenue. Thus Japan was guilty of wasting its most important strategic asset at a
time when it was largely unchallengeable in the Pacific.
In the eyes of the Imperial Navy, Japan had an array of strategic options
open to it at the beginning of 1942. Not all of these alternatives were recognized
or developed simultaneously. The sine qua non of success for any of them,
though, was the presence of the Navy’s fleet carriers. Of course, there were only
so many flight decks to go around. As will be seen, the Navy ultimately ended
up committing its carriers in support of more operations than they could handle,
with disastrous consequences. The circuitous path by which it shouldered these
disparate and contradictory commitments was a misadventure of truly epic
proportions.
The first strategic option was switching over from an offensive to a
defensive stance. Rear Admiral Kusaka, Nagumo’s chief of staff, was one of the
leading proponents of this vision.8 At this point in the war, Japan had conquered
but it had not really consolidated its gains. It needed time to toughen up its
defensive shell and begin preparing for when America would counterattack.
Obviously, this could not be accomplished while the defensive perimeter was
still being pushed outward. Shifting to a defensive stance would give the fleet
time and breathing room to replenish its aircraft and pilots, which were already
showing the deleterious effects of an all-out war.
Kusaka had a legitimate point, but he was the wrong man to present such a
plan.9 Both he and his superior, Nagumo, had been opposed to the attack on
Pearl Harbor.10 As a result, Kid Butai’s two senior officers paradoxically had
very little cachet within the fleet. Not only that, but such an approach seemed too
passive to be countenanced by a service as habitually aggressive as the Imperial
Navy. If a legitimate combat leader had agitated for the same proposal, it might
at least have been debated. But coming from a paper pusher like Kusaka, it was
dead on arrival.
The second option envisioned occupying some or all of Australia. On the
face of it, given the size of the objective, this was an outrageous proposal. Yet it
actually offered a number of attractions. Though large, Australia was sparsely
inhabited and could muster no more than a handful of divisions in its own
defense. Its very size meant that the Japanese could be reasonably assured of
getting ashore somewhere, since the Australians could not adequately cover their
coastline. Even securing the northern portion of the country would create a
beachhead on the Allies’ most important remaining bastion in the South Pacific.
The Japanese were well aware that Australia figured prominently in America’s
calculations. There were indications that the United States intended to use it as a
jumping off point for operations in the south. Capturing their base would
preempt these operations. Indeed, Admiral Nagumo’s raid against Darwin was
launched partly with such a goal in mind. Attacking Australia was supported by
the Plans Division of the Naval General Staff, which was headed up by Rear
Admiral Fukudome Shigeru, and ably assisted by his right-hand man, Captain
Tomioka Sadatoshi.11 It was also advocated by the fiery Vice Admiral Inoue
Shigeyoshi, an airpower visionary and now the current commander of the
Navy’s Fourth Fleet (headquartered at Truk), which had authority over
operations in the southern region.
However, the Army quickly nixed this proposal, arguing correctly that it
would take a minimum of ten to twelve divisions to execute.12 Australia was just
the sort of open-ended manpower sump that the Imperial Army wanted at all
costs to avoid. Thus, while agreeing that there were benefits to undertaking its
conquest, the Army asserted that the troops and transports were simply
unavailable. Worse, it tweaked the Navy’s nose by suggesting that an extension
of Japan’s campaign this far south would create a theater of operations that was
beyond the nation’s logistical capabilities. That the Army was wholly justified in
its assessment of Japan’s already slender logistical base did not help the Navy’s
temper.
A fallback option to an Australian invasion was cutting its line of supply
with the United States. To do so, Japan would attack to the southeast, through
the length of the Solomon Islands. From there, advances would be made into the
New Hebrides, New Caledonia (with its important port of Noumea), Fiji, and
finally Samoa. By doing so, Japan would sit astride Australia’s communications
lines, preventing any American buildup. This alternative was seen as less
desirable by both Tomioka and Inoue, but they were open to considering it in the
event an Australian invasion was dismissed.
At the same time, though, Combined Fleet had been quietly contemplating
conducting second-stage operations not in the south, but in the Central Pacific.
Initial support for this approach came from Vice Admiral Hosogaya Moshiro,
the commander with responsibility for guarding Japan’s seaward approaches in
the north–the path by which an American carrier force could gain easiest access
to the Japanese homeland.13 It was Yamamoto and his staff, though, that were its
most forceful proponents. Yamamoto had been haunted by the cardinal
disappointment of Pearl Harbor–the failure to sink the enemy flattops that by
rights should have been moored at Ford Island on the morning of the attack.
Instead, for all his efforts, the American carriers had yet to be brought to battle.
Yamamoto was determined to destroy them. Knowing that their primary base
was Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto believed it only made sense to precipitate a battle
somewhere near their lair.
Given Pearl Harbor’s outcome, Yamamoto had been considering the
Central Pacific almost from the inception of the war. On December 9, 1941, he
had ordered Admiral Ugaki to reexamine the notion of an invasion of Hawaii.14
Ugaki was actively working on this by early January 1942.15 Included in this
early operational plan was the concept that a direct invasion of Hawaii would be
used to precipitate a decisive battle with the Americans.16 However, Ugaki
admitted to himself shortly afterward that Hawaii’s native strength made fighting
a battle there extremely risky.17
It is important to clarify the role of an invasion in these schemes, however.
It has commonly been supposed that any successful Japanese operation in the
Central Pacific would automatically have culminated in an invasion of Hawaii.
Certainly this is what Yamamoto had in mind. However, like the notion of
operations in the Central Pacific itself, an invasion of Hawaii was by no means
accepted within the Navy as a whole, much less by the Army. Admiral
Yamamoto and his staff had been contemplating such a venture since the
summer of 1941, but few others had contemplated such a notion.18 During the
planning for the attack on Pearl Harbor, the idea had briefly been floated that a
simultaneous invasion also occur against Oahu.19 However, such an attack was
judged by Naval GHQ as being far too risky. In September 1941 the notion was
dropped, though it was not forgotten by Combined Fleet. Thus, during the
strategic debate that reemerged in early 1942, Yamamoto and his staff found
themselves rolling not one, but two rocks uphill.
It didn’t take long for both Naval GHQ and the Army to get wind of
Combined Fleet’s ambitions in the Central Pacific, whereupon Naval GHQ
moved aggressively to put a stop to them. On 16 December, HQ sent Captain
Tomioka down to Hashirajima to meet with Ugaki and discuss follow-on
operations. While there, Capt. Kuroshima Kameto, Combined Fleet’s “God of
Operations,” briefed Tomioka on operations aimed at seizing Palmyra, a tiny
atoll that lay halfway between Hawaii and Samoa. Tomioka initially believed
that this move was designed to help support follow-on operations into Fiji and
Samoa, which was Tomioka’s own favored axis of attack.20 Upon returning to
Tokyo, Tomioka relayed the results of his meeting to both his boss, Fukudome,
and to Fukudome’s counterpart on the Army General Staff, Lt. Gen. Tanaka
Shinichi. Tanaka saw immediately that Tomioka had been misled and that
invading Palmrya was intended as a move into the Central Pacific and a stepping
stone toward Hawaii, not Fiji or Samoa. He told Tomioka bluntly that the Army
viewed any enlargement of the defensive perimeter as dangerous and
unnecessary.21
Captain Tomioka was now on his guard. Highly intelligent and capable
(some said arrogant as well), he was not a man to be trifled with.22 In reaction to
General Tanaka’s misgivings, he shortly had Capt. Miwa Yoshitake of
Combined Fleet staff come up to Tokyo to report further on Combined Fleet’s
plans. Miwa dutifully arrived on 27 December, 1941, and delivered a briefing on
what was coming to be known within Combined Fleet as “Eastern Operation”–
the invasion of Hawaii.23 Tomioka, alarmed, saw that he had indeed been given
the wrong impression about Combined Fleet’s schemes. He thereupon tasked
one of his subordinates, Capt. Kami Shigenori, to prepare a logistical study of
the proposed operation. Kami dutifully complied, and by 11 January Tomioka
had all the ammunition he needed to shoot Combined Fleet’s proposal down.
While capturing Hawaii might be feasible, the logistical problems associated
with keeping the islands’ large civilian population supplied were substantial.
Hawaii was not even remotely self-sufficient in basic foodstuffs. These
necessities, in addition to the needs of the large garrison Japan would have to
post there, would require at least sixty transport loads per month-a figure beyond
Japan’s meager resources.24 It was obvious that in the face of likely resistance
from American submarines, these basic figures would need to be even further
expanded.
While Kami was preparing his report, Tomioka was simultaneously
working his superiors. At an Army/Navy conference in Tokyo on January 10,
1942, Admiral Nagano discussed the notion of Hawaiian operations with
General Sugiyama Gen, head of the Army General Staff. Sugiyama and Nagano
agreed that a direct attack on Hawaii was impossible, and that operations into the
Fiji/Samoa area made better sense.25 General Sugiyama liked this option,
because it would require less of a commitment from his branch of the service.
Nagano liked it, because it was at least an indirect move against Australia.
Into this lion’s den of stacked-deck politics walked Commander Sasaki
Akira, a relatively junior member of Combined Fleet staff, to deliver yet another
briefing to Naval GHQ on January 13th.26 His comrade, Miwa, not having
gotten a strong negative reaction to “Eastern Operation” on his previous trip up
to Tokyo, Sasaki was undoubtedly expecting smooth sailing as well. Instead, he
was treated to Captain Kami’s damning logistics study, followed by the Army’s
flat refusal to sanction an invasion of Hawaii, and topped off with the
announcement of Nagano and Sugiyama’s joint accord to proceed into the
Fiji/Samoa region instead. Sasaki thereupon retreated to Hashirajima to relay the
news to Combined Fleet staff.
Yamamoto and Ugaki were understandably furious at this turn of events,
but they had little choice but to temporarily turn their attention to the operational
concepts favored by Tokyo. Yamamoto instructed his chief of staff to flesh out
the Fiji/Samoa operation.27 Ugaki complied, although both he and his staff were
unenthusiastic. It is apparent, too, that the notion of operations in the Central
Pacific may have been temporarily banished from consideration, but it was never
far from either Ugaki or his superior’s minds. Indeed, Ugaki’s diary makes it
clear that both he and Kuroshima continued batting the idea around internally for
the next several weeks.28
However, it was at this junction that a fifth strategic option began its brief
rise to ascendancy. Just two weeks after Commander Sasaki’s demoralizing trip
to Tokyo, Ugaki privately confided to his diary that immediate actions against
Hawaii were probably impractical anyway, because of its inherent airpower, and
broached the notion that operations aimed at the Indian Ocean might offer better
results.29 Under this scheme, Japan would move against the British in India,
attempting to pry India from British rule by a combination of military action and
(it was hoped) a rebellion on the part of the indigenous population. Success in
this theater raised the possibility of effecting a linkup with Japan’s Axis partners
through the Middle East, thus creating a corridor of fascism across half the
globe. It also had the added bonus of being in accord with popular sentiment in
Japan, whose press was calling for just such a world-spanning Axis hegemony.30

By early February, Combined Fleet’s staff invited both Naval HQ as well as

Army representatives to attend a series of Indian Ocean war games to be held on
board Yamato on 20–23 February. The results were mixed at best. Ugaki noted
in his diary that “The idea of the operation in the Indian Ocean was not good.”31
The exercise suggested that it would be difficult to locate the enemy’s fleet and
that enemy airpower would badly hinder operations. However, the results of the
war gaming were apparently good enough to continue studying the operation,
with increasing attention given to the capture of Ceylon. For the time being, the
Army was going along with the concept, and it seemed to be interested in
expanding operations along the Indian front in the near future.32
However, within a matter of a few weeks, the bloom was apparently off the
rose. Indeed, just five days after the exercises on Yamato wrapped up, no
mention was made of such operations at a high-level liaison meeting in Tokyo.33
Part of this resulted from the continuing reluctance on the part of the Army to
open a new theater and thereby commit ground troops (planning estimates had
called for a minimum of five divisions) for garrison duties in places like Ceylon.
Not only that, but the Army began to become suspicious that by committing
substantial numbers of new troops to any coming Indian Ocean venture, it would
undermine its previously successful strategy of being able to veto any new
operation on the basis of troops simply “not being available.” The Army
suspected that the Navy might get it to commit to the Indian Ocean and then pull
a bait and switch back to the eastern operational front while simultaneously
demanding to use forces that were now known to be available. Given this
possibility, however far-fetched, the Army apparently judged that a return to
sophistry was the less risky strategy.34
A further complicating factor was that by mid-March the Army was
beginning to face up to the fact that operations in Burma were going to require
more support than had been anticipated. With Rangoon having fallen on March
8th, the Army was shortly to turn north to chase the British out of Burma and
into India, requiring a long advance up the Irrawaddy River into very
inhospitable terrain. Logistically, the Army was getting near the end of its rope.
The later construction of the infamous Burma Railroad was but one indication of
the difficulties Japan faced in keeping pressure on India via this axis of advance.
The addition of Ceylon would have vastly complicated these problems.35
Finally, matters were not helped by Germany’s signaling that it would not
carry out operations in the Middle East aimed at securing their portion of the
land bridge to Asia. This weakened the overall rationale behind an adventure in
the Indian Ocean, at least from the standpoint of generating propaganda.36 Taken
together, this option was dead by the end of March. Other than Nagumo’s
coming April raid–an operation that had been in the works for some time–no
further moves were anticipated.
So far as Army and Naval GHQ knew, the only strategic alternative now
left standing was the Southwest Pacific. On 13 March, Naval GHQ and the
Army formally ratified the notion of operations against Fiji and Samoa.37 In this,
they were further supported by Admiral Inoue, who had recently suffered two
setbacks that argued for more attention being paid to this theater. The first was
an abortive raid on Rabaul on 20 February by an American carrier, Lexington,
under the command of Vice Admiral Wilson Brown. During the course of this
action, the Americans had taught the Japanese a painful lesson concerning the
vulnerability of both their aircraft and their defensive perimeter as a whole.
Brown’s intention was to launch a hit-and-run attack. However, his task
force had been detected while still too far away to launch its aircraft. Rabaul was
hardly undefended, and the base air commander had dispatched his entire group
of seventeen Type 1 land-attack aircraft (later code-named “Betty” by the Allies)
from the recently activated 4th K k tai against the American carrier. The
ensuing engagement was a minor disaster. Fifteen of the squadron’s bombers
had been shot down, with no damage against the enemy to show for it.38 This
was an ominous development indeed. Rabaul was an important installation and
ought to have been able to defend itself from such a raid. That it could not cast a
pall over one of Japan’s basic strategic premises, namely, that a perimeter
buttressed by bases such as Rabaul could be defended against American
incursions.39
Then, barely a month later, on 10 March, came a second stunning reversal.
American carriers had again appeared in southern waters and launched surprise
attacks against Japanese forces making landings against the towns of Lae and
Salamaua on the northern coast of New Guinea.40 Two American carriers
(Lexington again, along with Yorktown, both under Vice Admiral Brown) had
launched 104 aircraft within sight of New Guinea’s southern coast. From there,
the Americans had flown across the towering Owen Stanley mountains and then
down upon the Japanese invasion forces, which were taken completely
unawares. The material effects were dramatic–two thirds of the invasion
transports were either damaged or sunk. The only thing that had prevented more
Army casualties was the fact that many of the transports had been close to shore
when the Americans attacked, allowing several of the ships to beach themselves.
In psychological terms, this raid had an even larger impact than had the 4th
Kokutai’s mauling. The Army, for its part, was horrified at the prospect of
similar attacks. Likewise, Vice Admiral Inoue immediately discerned that the
days of easy pickings were over in his theater of operations. Allied resistance
was stiffening, enemy air activity was on the rise, and the Americans were
clearly willing to employ their carriers to contest Japanese moves in the region.
Shoestring operations were no longer viable in the face of such opposition. If
Inoue was to complete the southern defensive perimeter, he needed help from
Combined Fleet to augment his tiny forces. Inoue was supported in his views by
the Naval General Staff.
In light of these unwholesome developments, Inoue invited a member of
Combined Fleet’s staff to confer with him at Truk. His goal was to lobby for
more support from Yamamoto. The well-traveled Captain Miwa, arriving on 13
March, agreed with Inoue that more support was needed.41 But the Navy’s fleet
carriers were currently unavailable, because they were about to enter the Indian
Ocean. However, Miwa assured Inoue that a carrier division could be freed up to
assist him within about a month. Inoue was encouraged by Miwa to write up a
proposal and submit it to Combined Fleet. Thereupon Miwa departed. What
Inoue discovered upon submission of his proposals in early April, though, was
that he had been sold a bill of goods. No carriers were forthcoming, as
Yamamoto had already earmarked them for operations in early June–operations
aimed at the Central Pacific!
During March, unbeknownst to anyone else, Yamamoto and Ugaki had
begun turning their attentions back to the Central Pacific. In the opinion of
Yamamoto, the fact that American carriers had recently shown an interest in
Inoue’s theater was less important than the simple fact that the Americans still
had carriers at all. As such, interdicting Australian supply lines in Fiji was
secondary to eliminating the naval strength that underwrote the safety of those
supply lines. Consequently, Japanese operations should be aimed at their
destruction. In fact, this was exactly the same objective that Yamamoto’s
opponent, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, intended to achieve as well. Since
Yamamoto held the initiative, though, it was up to him to create the conditions
whereby the Americans could be brought to battle.
At this point in the war, Japan believed that the U.S. Navy had probably
been reduced to a quartet of fleet carriers in the Pacific. Lexington was believed
to have been sunk early in the war by submarine attack.42 This left Saratoga and
the three Yorktown- class carriers (Yorktown, Enterprise, and Hornet) available
in the Pacific. The location of the remaining American carrier, Wasp, was
unknown.43 The smaller Ranger, which the Japanese factored into their
calculations, was believed to be in the Atlantic.44 This meant a theoretical
maximum of five American carriers to deal with. However, since it was
(presumably) unthinkable that the Americans would have a clear sense for
Japanese intentions, it was considered equally unlikely that all five would be in
the same location when the Japanese attacked. Yamamoto was confident that
with all six of his large carriers, Nagumo could deal with any enemy force he
encountered.
It is perhaps not surprising that the destruction of America’s carriers had
taken on such a heavy dose of symbolism in Yamamoto’s eyes. The mere
existence of these vessels–effective or not–illustrated the absurdity of the war
Japan had gotten itself into. While Japan’s initial victories had been spectacular,
they had also been ultimately empty, in that the war-making potential of the
United States remained intact. It was true that America had been expelled from
its Pacific dominions and that its Navy had been battered and humiliated at Pearl
Harbor. But the Americans were still willing to fight and had declared that
nothing short of total victory would satisfy their war aims against Japan.
Herein lay the fundamental strategic conundrum that now faced the
Japanese–how to force to the negotiating table an enemy who, although
wounded, was both vastly more powerful in the long term, and in the short term
had demonstrated a furious disinclination to bargain? Likewise, Japan had to
grapple with the question of how to secure, once and for all, the economic
underpinnings of its new empire against an enemy whose economy was not only
much larger but also largely untouchable. Clear-cut as these problems may have
been, the potential solution was far from obvious. In fact, it probably didn’t
exist. Having initiated the war with a surprise attack, it was almost certainly
beyond her means to cajole the Americans to the table, no matter what military
setbacks she subsequently foisted on her adversary. Given the lack of readily
identifiable exit strategies, Admiral Yamamoto’s answer–to continue offensive
operations aimed at the destruction of the American fleet–was predictable, and
yet ultimately empty.
Yamamoto was convinced that the best way to lure the American carriers
out was to attack an objective the Americans could not relinquish without a
fight. As related previously, his first notion had been to attack Hawaii directly.45
But American strength on the Hawaiian Islands had ballooned since the time of
December 7, and the seas and skies around them were now too heavily patrolled
to allow a repeat visit from Nagumo on anything like the favorable terms he had
achieved in December.46 Yet, Yamamoto reasoned that an attack against an
intermediate objective that placed Hawaii in danger would be met with a
vigorous American response. At the same time, the objective needed to be
outside the range of U.S. airpower stationed in Hawaii, thereby curtailing its
ability to intervene directly in the battle.
The place of attack he selected was the island of Midway. Aptly named, it
sat in the middle of the Pacific at the far tip of the Hawaiian chain, some 1,300
miles northwest of Oahu. On the face of it, Yamamoto’s objective hardly seemed
worth a good bar fight, let alone a decisive sea battle. Midway was a tiny atoll,
composed of two islands–Sand and Eastern–surrounded by a coral reef. Both
islands together comprised less than two square miles of real estate. Eastern
Island, the smaller of the two, was almost totally covered by the three
crisscrossing landing strips of an American airbase. Japanese intelligence
estimated that fifty-odd aircraft were operating from it.47 Sand Island held the
majority of the shore facilities, barracks, and the new American seaplane base.
This installation, which the Americans had completed just prior to the war at the
then-staggering cost of $20 million dollars, hosted a number of Catalina PBY
flying boats that patrolled the seas in all directions. However, given the
diminutive size of Midway itself, there was little chance that the Americans
could operate a very large air group there no matter how much money they
poured into its facilities.
The value of Midway lay not in the intrinsic value of its facilities, but rather
in its location. Capturing Midway would allow the Japanese to establish
themselves within the Hawaiian Islands. Midway could theoretically be used as a
springboard for future operations aimed at the conquest of Hawaii itself,
although its practical value as an advanced base was limited. However, holding
Midway would enable the Japanese to intercept American raiding forces
operating in the empty expanse of waters north and west of the Hawaiian islands.
It would also prevent the island being used by the Americans for attacks against
Wake.48 As such, Yamamoto reasoned that the Americans would be compelled
to fight for it.

2-3: Map exercise held by the staff of Naval General Headquarters, 1942.
Admiral Nagano is visible second from left, Rear Admiral Fukudome is third
from left (with mustache), Captain Tomioka is in direct center, next to the table
and Fukudome. (Author’s collection)

Given that the Naval General Staff was still behind the Fiji/Samoa option,
and Combined Fleet supported the Central Pacific option, things were bound to
come to a head once GHQ became aware of Yamamoto’s rekindled intentions. A
series of staff meetings in Tokyo during April 2–5, 1942, was the venue for the
showdown between the two camps. The battle was fought by proxy, with both
sides using staff officers to duke it out, while Yamamoto remained sequestered
on board Yamato at Hashirajima.
At Naval GHQ, Yamamoto’s errand boy, Captain Watanabe Yasuji, laid
out Combined Fleet’s proposal to the assembled officers. Yamamoto’s scheme
was immediately taken under fire by Admiral Fukudome’s three top planners–
Captain Tomioka and his two leading subordinates, Commanders Yamamoto
Yuji and Miyo Tatsukichi. Commander Miyo, himself an air officer and
classmate of Watanabe’s from Staff College, was particularly well suited to
commenting on Admiral Yamamoto’s plan. He promptly meted out a withering
criticism.
Miyo’s critique was based on three fundamentally sound objections. The
first was that in attempting to attack Midway, the Navy would be reversing the
formula that had worked so well during the previous months. In the opening
operations of the war, the Japanese had advanced under the cover of land-based
airpower, quickly establishing themselves at captured bases and moving the air
umbrella forward. In this new operation, though, they would be attacking across
the Pacific without such support. By the same token, Midway was itself an
outpost of a far-larger enemy bastion, Oahu, which could support it with relative
ease. Midway was within range of American heavy bombers but was too far
from Hawaii to allow Japanese fighter aircraft to extend their own sphere of
influence over the main islands.
It is important to recall that at this stage in the development of naval
aviation, conducting extended carrier operations in the face of enemy land-based
airpower was infeasible. Kid Butai couldn’t stand off a hostile enemy base and
hope to wear it down through attrition. This capability, the very definition of the
true carrier task force, would not be created until later in the war when the U.S.
Navy brought its vastly superior logistics capabilities to bear. Kid Butai,
although powerful, was a raiding force, and this is exactly how the Japanese
understood its usage. Once Midway was captured, Nagumo would be forced to
retire and replenish. At that point, Midway would be on its own, exposed to
Hawaii-based air and sea power.
This led directly to the second point: even if Midway was captured, it was
unlikely that it could be supported, particularly in the face of concerted enemy
submarine attack. The Japanese merchant marine was already overtaxed. Japan
had begun the war at a disadvantage in that many of her imports had previously
been carried in either neutral or Allied ships. When war was declared, Japan in
effect lost millions of tons’ worth of shipping overnight. These difficulties were
compounded by the need to support the military’s troop transport missions,
which pulled more tonnage out of service to the civilian economy. Unnecessarily
impacting this already overstretched network was to be avoided at all costs.
The truth was that every mile that Japan’s defensive perimeter expanded
placed an additional two miles of burden on the nation’s shipping, because ships
not only had to go out to the newly captured base, but also had to return. Given
that there was nothing on Midway even vaguely worth transporting home, those
ships would return empty. Every mile traveled in ballast, of course, lowered the
overall efficiency of Japan’s merchant marine still further. As a result, shipping
difficulties increased at a geometric rate in relation to the distance of the
defensive perimeter from the Home Islands. Whether or not Miyo understood
this problem in precisely this fashion is unlikely, but he and his fellow staff
officers could tell instantly that keeping the island in supply would be
exceedingly difficult.
Miyo also correctly pointed out that Midway itself was tiny, and could only
support a small air group, thus mitigating its usefulness as an advance base to be
used against the hundreds of American aircraft known to be on Hawaii.49 Yet,
even keeping a diminutive air group operating in the face of such opposition
would be difficult. Midway was so small that dispersing aircraft would be
impossible. This raised the specter of suffering outsized aircraft losses on the
ground in the event of American bombing. Miyo knew that aircraft shortages
were already a serious problem in the fleet–how did Yamamoto propose to keep
Midway supplied with aircraft given the likely attrition rates it would suffer? In
the same vein, Miyo doubted that sufficient aviation gasoline could be provided.
Japan’s stock of tankers was small, and most were already tied up supporting the
fleet or transporting crude oil from the southern resource areas back to the Home
Islands. Keeping aircraft operating on Midway would require a major logistics
effort, a fact that Yamamoto’s proposals ignored.
Miyo’s third and final critique was that attacking Midway would not
provoke the type of reaction from the Americans that Yamamoto blandly
assumed. In Miyo’s opinion, Midway was superfluous to the ultimate defense of
Hawaii for the very reasons just laid out. The Americans could afford to cede
their outlying outpost and then reclaim it whenever the Japanese logistical thread
showed signs of fraying. In the meantime, Japan’s ownership would not
jeopardize Hawaii’s position in the slightest. Why, Miyo asked, would the
Americans react as violently as Yamamoto assumed they would over such an
insignificant speck of land?
In Miyo’s opinion, and that of the Naval General Staff, launching
operations that severed American communications with Australia were far more
likely to provoke the needed reaction. If the Americans were serious about using
Australia as a base for future operations–and their recent commitment of carriers
to this area indicated that this was so–they could not help but respond vigorously
to any threat to its supply lines. Furthermore, a campaign in this region of the
Pacific, while distant from Japan, would at least place an equal burden of
distance on the Americans. Precipitating combat near Hawaii handed the
Americans the advantage of fighting from interior lines.
It seems clear that Watanabe found himself in an unenviable position.
Unable to counter Miyo’s arguments, he was on the verge of angry tears.50 The
truth was that Miyo’s critique was far better thought out than Yamamoto’s plan.
Despite being flustered, though, Watanabe refused to be lured into an argument
against Miyo’s well-reasoned objections. Instead, he simply restated Combined
Fleet’s position by rote, presenting its arguments as incontrovertible fact. This
inability to engage Yamamoto’s lackey in any form of rational discourse soured
Tomioka and Miyo’s moods still further.
In the end, under increasing pressure from GHQ, Watanabe was forced to
appeal to his chief to intercede. Placing a call to Yamato, Watanabe asked
Yamamoto to comment on Miyo’s alternative proposal for actions in the
southwest Pacific. Yamamoto replied that the most effective way of severing the
American lines of communication was to destroy the means whereby these lines
were maintained, namely, their carriers. He also argued that in the unlikely event
that the Americans did not bite at Midway, Japan would win a bloodless victory
there that extended the defensive perimeter outward.51
Yamamoto, in other words, was unmoved. Furthermore, the manner of his
delivery, and his unflinching support for an aide who had just been logically
dismembered made it clear that he was prepared, once again, to resign unless he
got his way.52 The Naval General Staff, having already lost this game once, was
in a much worse position to call Yamamoto’s bluff this time, particularly in light
of Yamamoto’s successes over the previous months. Predictably, when push
came to shove, the Naval General Staff caved in once more. The men in a
position to actually do something about Yamamoto’s near insubordination–
Fukudome and Nagano-apparently did nothing to defend their subordinates
against what was, in essence, a coup against their own authority. Nagano
thereupon grudgingly ratified Yamamoto’s basic operational plan on 5 April.53
All that remained now was for Yamamoto’s staff to work out the details.
As one historian has noted, this was a disgraceful way of conducting a
54
war. Nagano and Fukudome had essentially ceded all responsibility for
planning to Combined Fleet and had elevated Yamamoto’s writ to law. No one
was now in a position to challenge his authority. Yamamoto had also
demonstrated precisely what sort of leader he was–one who ruled through
intimidation rather than reason and who was not prepared to accept criticism.
However, Yamamoto’s victory came at a price. In return for GHQ’s
grudging adoption of Midway as the objective of the next operation, Yamamoto
was shortly forced to accede to first one, and later a second of the Naval Staff’s
demands. The first, which greatly affected Yamamoto’s operational planning for
his decisive battle, was an agreement to incorporate an attack on the Aleutian
Islands into the overall scheme for June’s operations.55 The second concession,
as we shall see shortly, would be a decision to support a limited incursion into
the Southwest Pacific prior to the attack on Midway. Thus, a strategic
formulation process that should have logically reached a final decision in favor
of a unified strategy with a single near-term objective, in fact resulted in de facto
support for three objectives in two theaters, none of which was mutually
reinforcing. Nothing better illustrates the depths to which Japan’s policymaking
had sunk on the eve of its great battle.
An attack into the Aleutians had not originally been part of Yamamoto’s
vision. Rather, it was an idea that had been kicked around by lower-level officers
within Army and Naval GHQ.56 Capturing the Aleutians was seen as a means of
forestalling U.S. offensives (both by air and naval forces) toward northern Japan.
In Naval GHQ’s conception, Operation AL would have been conducted at the
very beginning of the second-phase operations, before any of the major
offensives were opened. However, during the heated April exchanges, it was
decided to attack both Midway and the Aleutians in early June. This was agreed
to by Nagano on 5 April as well, and orders were issued to that effect on 16
April.57 Thereafter, Yamamoto handed off the detailed planning to Captain
Kuroshima.
The inclusion of the Aleutians widened the overall scope of planning
enormously. The area of campaign now encompassed a trapezoidal area bounded
on the north and south by the 1,500-mile lengths of both the Aleutian and
Hawaiian island chains and spanning the 2,400-odd miles in between. This
represented an area of nearly four million square miles, or roughly 2 percent of
the surface area of the globe, most of it composed of the stormy waters of the
North Pacific. It was an outsized battlefield, to say the least.
Even with the ambitious inclusion of the Aleutians into the overall scheme,
follow-on operations against Hawaii had not been authorized, because Army
ratification would be required for such an undertaking. Indeed, at this point, the
Army had not yet even agreed to contribute forces to securing Midway, let alone
the divisions that would have been required for Hawaii. Unfortunately for the
long-suffering Captain Tomioka, now that Admirals Fukudome and Nagano had
given their assent (thereby making it the Navy’s plan, rather than just Combined
Fleet’s), it fell to him to sell the idea to the Army. Though he doubtless viewed
the task ahead with a distaste bordering on nausea, on 12 April he dutifully met
with General Tanaka.58
 The meeting did not go well. The general was a sharp customer, and though
Tomioka did his level best to deliver a version of the plan that would deflect
criticism, Tanaka immediately realized that Midway necessitated a substantial
enlargement of the defensive perimeter. More important, Tanaka correctly
divined that capturing Midway represented Combined Fleet’s first step toward
an eventual operation aimed at Hawaii. He was strongly opposed to both notions,
even going so far as to declare that an Hawaiian invasion would undermine the
empire’s entire war effort.59 In the end, Tanaka flatly refused to contribute
troops to either Midway or the Aleutians.
Despite this rather sharp dismissal, Tomioka had little choice but to proceed
with the wholesale gulping down of Yamamoto’s plans, culminating in his
penning a naval staff document entitled “Imperial Navy Operational Plans for
Stage Two of the Great East Asia War.” Within its pages, the notion of an
operation aimed at the Indian Ocean was officially relegated to secondary status.
An advance against Fiji and Samoa was dropped altogether (although only for
the moment, as we shall see). In lieu of Army forces, naval landing troops would
be employed against Midway.60 After the seizure of Midway, Johnston and
Palmyra would be taken, setting up an invasion of Hawaii. Despite Tanaka’s
rebuff, the Navy’s plan optimistically anticipated that this operation would be
launched in cooperation with the Army. It was this plan that Admiral Nagano
personally submitted to the emperor on 16 April. Also present was General
Sugiyama Gen, the Army’s chief of staff, who raised no objections. Perhaps he
was waiting for a more opportune time to make the Army’s counterarguments.
As events were to prove, though, this was the Army’s last opportunity to stop the
forthcoming operation. Just two days after the audience with the emperor, the
Americans would seal Yamamoto’s political victory.
3

Plans

To all outward appearances, during the first four months of 1942 the
Americans were losing the war in the Pacific in a truly spectacular fashion. The
raid on Pearl Harbor had shaken the self-confidence of the U.S. Navy to its
foundations. America’s battleship force–the core of its naval power for decades–
had been crippled at the outset, meaning that there was no hope of defending the
Philippines when the Japanese simultaneously launched operations there. Nor
could it do more than offer token forces to the defense of Java and Sumatra. The
Americans were forced to watch as the Japanese offensive unfolded with a speed
and precision that no one had thought possible. If the U.S. Navy’s material
losses had been, in absolute terms, marginal to its overall strength, the blows to
its pride had been real enough.
By April the strategic position of the Allies in the Pacific had been reduced
to a shambles. Java and Sumatra had fallen, with almost the entire U.S. Asiatic
squadron destroyed in the process. The Japanese were now in a position to
threaten Australia directly. The Philippines were completely isolated, and the
bulk of General Douglas MacArthur’s forces there, though gallant, would
surrender on 9 April.1 Malaya and Burma had fallen under the aggressor’s boot,
and the British would shortly find India directly threatened as well. The picture
was one of utter calamity. However, the disasters of the previous four months
had resulted in several key realizations on the part of the Americans.
First, it was clear that the battleship was no longer a weapon of decision. If
the war was to be won, America would have to rely on aircraft carriers for power
projection and submarines for destruction of enemy shipping. For the U.S. Navy,
this was a simple matter of finding virtue in necessity. The preservation and
augmentation of its carriers, and the destruction of the enemy’s, were the
overriding goals of the U.S. Navy from the time the smoke cleared over Pearl
Harbor.
Second, if a successful defense against the Japanese was to be made, it
would hinge primarily on the abilities of the U.S. military. The tiny Dutch forces
had been annihilated. More important, British strength had evaporated to the
point that the Royal Navy was in no position to leave the Indian Ocean, even in
direct defense of Australia and New Zealand. This was a shocking state of
affairs, but the weakness of Britain’s position was plain for all to see. For their
part, Australia and New Zealand, though possessed of first-rate militaries, had
neither the population nor the economic basis to guarantee their own defense, let
alone carry the war to Japan. If the war in the Pacific was to be won, the United
States would have to shoulder the majority of the burden.
Third, in light of these considerations, it was vital that the Americans
immediately guarantee the security of those Pacific bases that were essential to
the long-term prosecution of the war. In an immediate sense, these were Pearl
Harbor and the Panama Canal. The loss of either would have been catastrophic.
The Panama Canal was so remote that its outright capture was almost
inconceivable, and hence it required little garrisoning. Hawaii was quite another
matter, however, and the Americans moved quickly after 7 December to beef up
Oahu’s defenses, as well as those at outlying bases such as Johnston Island and
Midway. By April of 1942, the garrison in Hawaii had already increased to
nearly 70,000 combatants (up from about 30,000 in October 1941), and was
projected to grow to 115,000 in short order.2 If not absolutely guaranteeing the
security of the islands, the size of the American garrison certainly presented the
Japanese with formidable obstacles to conquest.
However, by the same token, if the United States was ultimately to be
successful in carrying the war to the enemy, Australia had to be defended as
well. By February the Japanese were already threatening its northern frontiers.
Worse yet, several of the Aussie’s splendid infantry divisions were still deployed
in the Middle East with the British Army. At this critical juncture, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt had personally assured Australia’s prime minister, John
Curtin, that at least one division of American troops, and perhaps more, would
be sent to ensure Australia’s security.
Such a promise was logical, but it generated additional requirements
beyond the direct commitment of American forces. To support ground troops, it
would also be necessary to defend the communications lines to Australia. This
meant that several important island groups–including the Fijis, New Caledonia,
and Samoa–would need to be fortified more strongly. The Australian and New
Zealand garrisons already in these areas were pitifully understrength.
Accordingly, the Americans lost little time in scrambling to send substantial
combat contingents to these potential hot spots.
Thus, the Americans in short order found themselves moving regiments and
divisions to places that many U.S. officers wouldn’t have been able to find on a
map just six months earlier. This led directly to the fourth American realization–
if the Pacific was to be defended, the notion of a “Germany First” strategy had to
be flexible enough to accommodate the immediate needs of the Pacific. In
practical terms, this meant that the prevailing notion of an invasion of the
European continent as early as mid-1942 had to be put on ice. In hindsight,
attacking Germany directly in 1942 was completely unrealistic in any case.
Nevertheless, this temporary reordering of military priorities in favor of the
Pacific represented a dramatic modification of prewar strategy.
The man upon whom command in the Pacific fell was Admiral Chester W.
Nimitz, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet. Nimitz had taken charge on 31
December 1941, after the disgraced Admiral Husband E. Kimmel had been
relieved following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Nimitz was by all accounts an
excellent officer. Instead of sacking Kimmel’s staff, his first act was to retain
them amid assurances of his utter confidence in their abilities. This had the effect
of steadying the morale of a command that had been badly shaken. Likewise, the
new commander in chief was a sound judge of men, knowing who to promote
and who to lateral into positions that better fit their abilities. He delegated
authority easily and knew how to get the best out of his subordinates.
Levelheaded, Nimitz was apparently immune to panic and retained at all times a
shrewd ability to assess odds and likely outcomes. His calculating nature was
complemented, though, with boldness and an aggressive spirit. Nimitz was
determined to destroy the main force of the Japanese Navy as soon as was
practical, and he knew that his carriers would be the centerpiece of any such
action. Even in the face of the near hysteria of the early war months, when the
exploits of Japan’s warriors had given them the aura of invincibility, Nimitz was
confident that his sailors and aviators were fully the equal of their opponents.

3-1: Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. Shrewd and insightful, Nimitz provided the
U.S. Pacific Fleet with a winning combination of calculation and boldness.
(Photo courtesy John Lundstrom)

For the moment, though, Nimitz had little choice but to react to Japanese
moves. He did not yet have anything resembling the material preponderance that
he would need to win the war. He was outnumbered in fleet carriers, the
Saratoga having been heavily damaged in January by an enemy submarine. The
newer, but smaller Wasp was still in the Atlantic. This left four carriers–
Saratoga’s sistership, Lexington, and the Enterprise, Yorktown, and their newly
commissioned sistership, Hornet, which had just reached the Pacific in March.
Throughout the first months of the war, Nimitz gamely employed his
carriers in a series of raids against exposed enemy outposts. Although these
minor actions had little material impact on the war, they did have the positive
effect of hardening the American carrier air groups. However, by April, reacting
to pressure from Washington that the Navy do something positive to boost the
morale of the American public, two of Nimitz’s carriers participated in a far
more audacious carrier raid, one that ultimately produced outsized results.
On the morning of 18 April, just two days after Admiral Nagano had
presented the Midway plan to the emperor, sixteen American twin-engined
medium bombers appeared as if by magic over Tokyo and half a dozen other
cities. Commanded by Army Air Force Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle,
these aircraft had been launched some 400 miles off of the Japanese coastline by
the carrier Hornet. She, along with her consort Enterprise, had penetrated the
Japanese defensive lines in much the same way that Japan had opened the war
against the United States–by traversing the desolate wastes of the northern
Pacific.
Given the scarcity of carriers, Admiral Nimitz had been reluctant to
authorize such an operation. But he had no choice but to comply with his
superiors’ wishes and ordered the newly arrived Hornet to participate. At
Alameda Air Station in California, Hornet had duly stowed Doolittle’s B-25s on
the after end of her flight deck and then set off directly across the Pacific for
what the majority of her sailors thought was an aircraft ferrying mission. It was
only after being joined by Vice Admiral William F. Halsey Jr.’s Enterprise in
mid-ocean that the nature of the mission was fully revealed.
Such a raid had not been unanticipated by the Imperial Navy–Ugaki had
remarked on the danger of such attacks in his diary as early as 2 February,
1942.3 To safeguard against these threats, the Japanese had placed a ring of
picket boats 700 miles off the shore of the Home Islands to detect the approach
of enemy task forces. A pair of these sentinels had, in fact, sighted the American
task force in time to warn Tokyo before being sunk by the Americans. However,
the Japanese had not anticipated the American innovation of using longer-ranged
Army bombers launched from a carrier. Normally, an enemy flattop would have
been obligated to close to within about 200 miles (the extreme range of U.S.
carrier-based aircraft) in order to attack. Upon being sighted, however, the
Americans had simply let fly with their B-25s and then promptly headed for the
exits.
The Imperial Navy tried to redeem the situation. Coincidentally, Nagumo
and his five carriers were making their way back to Japan from their raids
against Ceylon when Doolittle attacked, and Akagi, S ry , and Hiry were sent
charging eastward from Mako (Taiwan) in pursuit of the American flattops. But
the Americans were not waiting around to receive Japanese retribution for their
insolence. Akagi and company had found nothing but empty ocean and were
obliged to return to Hashirajima empty-handed.
Strictly speaking, the military results of the Doolittle raid were so minimal
as to be laughable–a few bombs sprinkled in desultory fashion over various
targets and the light carrier Ryuho slightly damaged on the building ways in
Yokosuka. But the psychological impact of the attack was enormous. Admiral
Nagano, having personally heard the explosions in Tokyo, reacted to news of the
attack with stunned disbelief, muttering, “This shouldn’t happen. This just
should not happen.”4 Yamamoto took ill and retreated to his cabin for an entire
day.5 Like all the Navy’s upper command, he felt a deep obligation to safeguard
the nation from attack. More particularly, the thought that the emperor had been
personally endangered filled Yamamoto with an unquenchable remorse. He
knew, and his peers knew, that such a raid could never have materialized if the
American carriers had been sunk outright in Hawaii at the beginning of the war.
The fact that not a single American plane had been brought down by Japanese
defenses only made the whole episode even more mortifying.
This American pinprick had the effect of cementing the strategic debate in
favor of Yamamoto and winning the Army over regarding operations in the
Central Pacific. Until the American carriers were safely in their graves, the
homeland could never be completely protected from their attacks. After April
18, their destruction had been raised to the status of an axiomatic good.
The day after Doolittle’s raid, General Tanaka privately told Captain
Tomioka that he was rethinking his reservations regarding Operation MI.6 On
the 20th, Tanaka not only formally approved of Operation MI, but also
committed the Army to supplying troops for the assault.7 Even more intriguing,
he informally asked Tomioka for more details on “Eastern Operation,” which
marked something of a watershed in the Army’s appreciation for the scheme.
The Army initially assented to Operation MI on the explicit understanding that it
not be dragged into operations aimed at Hawaii.8 However, within a month, the
Army had done an about-face on this matter, too. On 25 May, just days before
the Nagumo force was slated to sail for Midway, the Army issued orders to
several units to begin preparing for an amphibious attack against Hawaii.
Training for the assault was to be completed by the end of September.9 Thus,
against great odds, Yamamoto had achieved his goal–operations in the Central
Pacific aimed at the destruction of the American fleet and the subsequent capture
of Hawaii.

It is necessary now to turn to an examination of Yamamoto’s operational plan as

it emerged in its final form, a task for which the reader would be well advised to
pour a rather tall glass of spirits beforehand. The first order of business involves
clarifying the exact relationship between the operations aimed at the Aleutians
(AL) and those centered on Midway (MI). Western accounts of the battle have
generally characterized Operational AL as being an elaborate diversion in
support of Operation MI.10 According to this interpretation, AL was designed to
lure the U.S. fleet out of Pearl Harbor such that it could be intercepted and
engaged north of Hawaii as it moved to relieve the Aleutians. However, this
rendering of Japanese intentions is incorrect. In fact, Operation AL was an
entirely separate endeavor that was never designed to impact the conduct of
operations around Midway.
 The debunking of the “diversion” myth is supported by numerous Japanese
sources. Prominent among these are a pair of monographs prepared by Japanese
naval officers for the Military History Section of U.S. Army Forces Far East
immediately after the war.11 According to one of these reports, the April 5
compromise between Nagano and Yamamoto led to “a revision of the
[operational] plan to allow for conducting the Midway and Aleutian Invasions
simultaneously in early June [emphasis added].”12 The second monograph
confirms that Operation MI was to be carried out “nearly simultaneously with
the Aleutians Operation.”13 In neither of these monographs is mention made of
Operation AL being a feint or diversion to be launched before Operation MI or
of its being intended to draw the Americans north out of Pearl Harbor. It’s worth
noting, too, that the main battleship groups for the two operations–Yamamoto’s
Main Body and Takasu’s Guard Force–sortied together from Hashirajima and
simply diverged thereafter.
Admiral Nagumo’s official report on the battle similarly makes no mention
of the Aleutians operations being a diversion. Indeed, it doesn’t describe the
Aleutians as being related to the action off Midway in any way whatsoever.
Similarly, the postwar interview of Commander Watanabe Yasuji–Yamamoto’s
staff officer–is completely silent on the topic.14 One would have supposed that
such a prominent feature of the plan would have been pointed out by Watanabe,
making this omission curious indeed. The interview of Admiral Nagano as well
(despite Nagano’s spurious disavowal of his staff’s role in creating the Aleutians
operational concept) makes no mention of AL being a diversion. Watanabe and
Nagano, of course, were both present at the 2–5 April staff discussions that led
to Operation AL’s incorporation into the overall battle plan and were clearly in a
position to have pointed out this facet of the operations.
The second objection to be raised is simply one of common sense. For a
diversion to have lured the Americans from Pearl Harbor, an attack in the
Aleutians would have needed to take place not one, but several days before the
Japanese showed their hand at Midway. This was absolutely necessary in order
to give the U.S. fleet time to react to the perceived threat and begin steaming
north to the Aleutians. Even had they responded quickly, on only a day’s notice,
the Americans would still have been well south of Midway when Nagumo
attacked. Indeed, as will be shown, Yamamoto never considered that the enemy
would move directly north toward the Aleutians. Rather, he envisioned U.S.
forces sailing west from Oahu and then giving battle to the southwest of
Midway.15 This was hardly the course of action one would expect of a force
being deliberately lured toward the Aleutians.
 The final piece of the puzzle is to be found in the Japanese official war
history. In its final form, Yamamoto’s plans all fundamentally revolved around
“N-day,” 7 June (Tokyo time, 6 June local), when Midway was to be invaded
and captured.16 As mentioned, offensive operations would open several days
beforehand, on day N-3 (4 June Tokyo, 3 June local). On this day, as set forth in
the original Japanese plan of operations, Dutch Harbor and Midway were both
to have been attacked.17 Indeed, this was the plan up until shortly before
Nagumo actually sailed.18 Thus, the idea of the Aleutians being a feint is clearly
untrue.
For the most part, Operation AL was simply an expedient landgrab, to be
executed while the U.S. Pacific Fleet was busy elsewhere. Its goal was to push
Japan’s defensive perimeter outward. More precisely, AL’s object was “to
capture or demolish points of strategical [sic] value on [the] western Aleutian
Islands in order to check the enemy’s air and ship maneuvers in this area.”19 By
doing so, air and surface patrols “would provide a perfect shielding opportunity
for Japan. … Potential incursion from the north, and communication links
between the United States and Russia would then be obstructed.” This latter was
a very important point, given the quantity of American supplies being sent to
Russia via the Barents Sea. Furthermore, Japanese possession of the Aleutians
was “conceived as a flanking movement to protect. … Midway from a possible
attack from the north,” once the island was secured.20
It is clear from the foregoing that the Japanese held an exaggerated opinion
of the utility of the Aleutians as a possible path for launching either an invasion
or strategic bombing attacks against the homeland. The weather conditions in the
Aleutians (as the Japanese were shortly to discover) were routinely awful. The
islands themselves–small, mountainous, and devoid of any ground cover or
building materials–made the archipelago useless for staging any offensive action
larger than an occasional narwhal hunt. Yet, such were the defensive goals with
which the Japanese went forth.
The second major clarification regarding AL regards how it was to unfold.
Despite being almost a sideshow in comparison to the operations off Midway,
Operation AL’s order of battle was perhaps more complex than that of Operation
MI. Yamamoto’s plan considered three distinct phases of operation, each of
which anticipated major reshufflings of the naval formations involved. This has
the effect of greatly complicating any discussion of the anticipated movements
of warships during the operation. The three phases, known as “Distributions,”
were detailed in Northern Naval Force Order No. 24, issued on 20 May.21 Their
goals and timing were as follows:
 • The First Distribution encompassed the initial approach to the objective
and operations up to the point where the immediate landing objectives
were achieved (i.e., approximately 8 June, 1942).
• The Second Distribution pertained to operations designed to consolidate
Japan’s hold on the area and would continue until such time as the threat
of counterattack by the enemy had been largely nullified.
• The Third Distribution defined reallocation of ships to guard the northern
area. This was to be in effect by 20 June, 1942.22
The three Distributions, and their effects on the forces assigned to
Operation AL, are described in tabular format in Appendix 11.
Yamamoto envisioned opening Operation AL with an attack on Dutch
Harbor on 4 June (three days before the planned invasion of Midway itself). This
would nullify American naval and airpower at their only major base proximate
to the western end of the Aleutians archipelago. Attacks would continue as
needed, followed by landings on the islands of Kiska and Adak on the 6th. An
optional landing on Attu was scheduled for the 12th. The landing at Adak was to
be temporary, lasting only as long as it took to destroy the American facilities
that were feared to be there. Although the capture of Dutch Harbor was not
contemplated at this time, the Japanese felt it was important to secure bases from
which patrols could be mounted against it. Doing so would forestall the feared
development of Dutch Harbor as an air and submarine base that threatened the
north Pacific.
To accomplish these aims, an Army force of 1,143 troops was slated to land
on Attu and Adak, carried by a single transport. Guarding it would be light
cruiser Abukuma, four destroyers, and a minelayer. Meanwhile, Kiska would be
assaulted by 550 troops from the Navy’s Maizuru Third Special Pioneer Force
(known in the West as Special Naval Landing Forces, or SNLF), accompanied
by a construction battalion. The Navy troops were to be carried in two transports
guarded by the light cruisers Kiso and Tama and three destroyers, accompanied
by an armed merchant cruiser and three minesweepers.23
Overall command of the Aleutians operation was to be vested in Vice
Admiral Hosogaya Moshiro’s Northern Force Main Body, which during the First
Distribution would consist of heavy cruiser Nachi, two destroyers, two oilers,
and three supply ships. Also under Hosogaya’s control was Rear Admiral
Yamazaki Shigeaki’s force of six submarines, which were to scout ahead of the
landing forces and screen the surface forces behind them.
The real striking power of the Aleutians operation was centered on Rear
Admiral Kakuta Kakuji’s Second Mobile Striking Force. Dai-ni Kid Butai bore
little resemblance to its more illustrious cousin. It consisted of Carrier Division 4
(hereafter CarDiv 4), composed of the converted carrier Juny (which had just
been commissioned) and the light carrier Ry j . They were an odd pair. Juny
was larger and had better aircraft-handling facilities, but she was hampered by
her low speed of twenty-five knots. This meant that she was not considered
capable of operating torpedo aircraft, because in light wind conditions she
wasn’t fast enough to create the relative wind over her bow necessary to launch
them. Kakuta’s flagship, Ry j , was faster, but she was plagued by small
elevators, meaning that she could not operate the burly Type 99 dive-bomber.24
Thus, neither of these ships was as useful as a true fleet carrier alone, and they
were only marginally more useful in tandem. Kakuta’s command was filled out
by heavy cruisers Takao and Maya, three destroyers, and an oiler.
A small independent Seaplane Force, composed of the seaplane tender
Kimikawa Maru and a destroyer, was responsible for cooperating with the
landing operations as well as locating enemy ships.25 In a similar vein, the 22nd
Picket Boat Squadron would provide a defensive perimeter around the operation.
The Aleutians Base Air Force, consisting of four transports and six large Type
97 flying boats from the Toko air group, would provide scouting support.
In distant support of Kakuta’s force was the Aleutians Screening Force
under Vice Admiral Takasu Shiro, who hoisted his flag on battleship Hyuga. The
core of his force was BatDiv 2, composed of Hy ga’s sistership, Ise, and the
dowager battleships Fuso and Yamashiro. These were the four oldest
battlewagons in Japan’s inventory and were roughly equivalent to the aged
American battleships sunk at Pearl Harbor. Screening these heavy units were
light cruisers Kitakami and i and twelve destroyers. Two oilers accompanied
them. However, Takasu’s dreadnoughts were not officially part of Operation AL
and were only mentioned tangentially in the original Japanese planning
documents. They would sail with Yamamoto’s Main Body and thereafter place
themselves in a position to provide support to the Aleutians forces if “events
warranted.”26
Once the Aleutians were captured, the Second Distribution would bring
about a large-scale reshuffling of Japan’s warships. The Attu-Adak and Kiska
invasion force would be dissolved and its vessels incorporated into other
formations, notably the Main Body. This beefed-up unit would be retained for
“support of the entire Aleutian Operation.”27 Meanwhile, Kakuta’s Second
Mobile Striking Force would be augmented by light carrier Zuih and a quartet
of destroyers drawn from the various Midway forces. Kakuta’s goal remained
the same–the annihilation of any American vessels encountered. In support of
this, the Submarine Force would be more than doubled by the addition of
another seven boats that had been under maintenance in Japan at the time the
operational orders were issued (20 May). The Seaplane Group, reinforced with
Kamikawa Maru (again drawn from the Midway forces), would continue its
scouting mission, as would the Base Air Force.28 On both Kiska and Attu, the
land forces would begin deploying for defense.29
The Third Distribution anticipated yet another major reshuffling, aimed at
the long-term defense of the newly won territories. The Main Body would be
reduced, though its support-oriented mission would remain. Two new support
formations would be formed, each centered on a pair of fast battleships from the
BatDiv 3 and augmented by heavy cruisers and destroyers, in many cases newly
released from the forces clustered around Midway. At the same time, Kakuta’s
Second Mobile Striking Force would be heavily reinforced and divided into two
separate raiding groups. The first group would essentially consist of the forces
he had begun the battle with–CarDiv 4 and their escorts. Meanwhile, Zuih
would be split off into the 2nd Raiding Group, joined by the Zuikaku, which was
expected to be ready for operations by this time.30 Both raiding groups were to
be under Kakuta’s overall command. However, no specific missions for either
group were defined, and it is difficult to see what these forces would have been
able to accomplish in such latitudes.
Operation AL’s three Distributions ultimately expected to call on the
services of more than eighty vessels at one time or another, including eight
battleships out of the Imperial Navy’s inventory of eleven, four of her eleven
carriers, and thirteen submarines. By itself, the Aleutians plan represented a
larger commitment of forces than any operation the Japanese had embarked on
thus far in the war. Far from being a sideshow, AL actually represented a sizable
drain on the Imperial Navy’s already-scarce resources.
It is interesting to note that nowhere in the Aleutians battle plan was there
apparently any provision for Kakuta’s Second Striking Force to be in any
position to support Nagumo’s operations to the south after its initial attacks
against Dutch Harbor were concluded. If anything, the flow of forces was in
reverse, in that many of the vessels slated for inclusion in AL’s later phases were
to come directly from the Midway forces. Indeed, some of them, including four
destroyers from Nagumo’s own screen, were scheduled to arrive soon after 8
June. Presumably these vessels would be detached and head northward
immediately after the conclusion of operations in the vicinity of Midway.
All in all, Operation AL reflected the larger problems inherent in
Yamamoto’s battle plan. It anticipated using widely separated forces and putting
a great number of warships into northern waters, many of which weren’t
accomplishing anything terribly important. At the same time, AL’s force
structure for its later Distributions actually anticipated siphoning off units that
were being used near Midway, which was ostensibly the center of strategic
gravity in the entire Pacific Ocean. These requirements directly contributed to
the clockwork rigidity of the planning for Operation MI itself. It is difficult to
escape the conclusion that all the time and energy that went into Operation AL
might have been better spent focusing on operations to the south. Operation
AL’s flaws, though, paled in comparison to the errors Yamamoto would commit
in his schemes aimed at Midway.
Operation MI would begin at the same time that Kakuta opened his attacks
on Dutch Harbor: N-3 day (4 June Tokyo time, 3 June local). Nagumo’s force–
six fleet carriers (CarDivs 1, 2, and 5), two fast battleships from BatDiv 3, two
heavy cruisers, and eleven destroyers with their light cruiser flotilla leader–
would approach Midway from the northwest. On the morning of the 4th (Tokyo
time), Dai-ichi Kid Butai would be in position to strike. It was believed that a
single attack would be sufficient to destroy the American airbase and its
aircraft.31 The Japanese presumed that they would have the element of strategic
and tactical surprise on their side, because offensive activities would be opened
concurrently with Operation AL. Thus, Nagumo’s carriers would simply sweep
in unannounced and deliver a death blow against American airpower on the
island.
Day N-2 (5/4 June) would see additional air strikes, with the Japanese
turning their attention toward reducing the island’s defenses in preparation for
the coming amphibious operation. While it was understood that Nagumo would
have to deal with any American carriers that ventured north from Pearl Harbor to
contest the Midway invasion, it was anticipated that the Americans would not be
able to steam the distance between Hawaii and Midway in any less than three
days. This being the case, Nagumo would only have to attend to one thing at a
time. Nagumo’s force would also use ten of its Type 97 carrier attack planes for
scouting purposes. Each of these aircraft would search out to a range of 400
miles to help provide early warning of the American fleet.32
Ground operations would begin on the morning of N-1 day (6/5 June). The
Japanese would land on Kure Island, a tiny islet sixty miles west of Midway.
Rear Admiral Fujita Ryutaro’s Seaplane Tender Group would secure this
objective with a small contingent of troops. It was then to be put into operation
as a seaplane base for use against Midway itself. On the morning of N-Day (7/6
June), Midway would be assaulted by a mixed group of both Navy and Army
units. The landing would be carried out by barge, known in the Imperial Navy as
Daihatsu, each of which could carry about 100 soldiers as far as the reef.33 From
there, the men would have to wade the remaining 200 or more yards, through the
lagoon, and onto the beaches by foot. The Navy’s 2nd Combined SNLF,
consisting of some 1,500 soldiers, would be landed on Sand Island. Eastern
Island would be invaded by the 1,000 men of Colonel Ichiki Kiyonao’s
regiment, named the Ichiki Detachment after its commander. Both forces would
be landed on the southern shores of the islands, where the reef was less of an
obstacle to amphibious movements.34 An additional landing on Sand Island’s
northwest corner was also planned, if necessary.
Accompanying the combat troops were two construction battalions (some
of which were equipped with American construction material captured at Wake
Island) and other auxiliary personnel necessary to repair Midway and turn it into
a frontline air base, bringing the total ground forces to over 5,000. The transports
would also be hauling along ninety-four cannon, forty machine guns, six Type A
midget submarines, five motor torpedo boats, and all the accoutrements to
develop Midway into a major outpost. Additional midget submarines, as well as
land-based torpedo tubes and a dozen 20-cm guns, were slated for delivery in
mid-June.35
In a fashion that was typical of Japan’s interservice cooperation, the Army
troops would sail separately from Yokosuka, while the SNLF troops would sail
from Kure. Both the Army and Navy had their own separate transports, and
neither service was willing to accommodate the other aboard their own ships.
Both private fleets would rendezvous at Saipan and thereafter would sail
together under the command of Rear Admiral Tanaka Raizo’s Transport Group.
This force consisted of the light cruiser Jints , ten destroyers, three patrol boats,
twelve transports, and several oilers.
In relative proximity to Tanaka would sail Vice Admiral Kurita Takeo’s
Close Support Group, which was centered on the four powerful heavy cruisers of
CruDiv 7–Kumano, Suzuya, Mikuma, and Mogami. This quartet’s forty eight-
inch guns were to provide fire support for the landing. However, the Imperial
Navy’s raison d’étre was engaging enemy warships, not supporting landings.
The Navy had never spent much time developing any sort of formal approach for
spotting and coordinating gunfire ashore for troops. In hindsight, there is a very
real question as to how effective CruDiv 7 would have proved to be in this role
had it actually been put to the test. Kurita was accompanied by two destroyers
and an oiler. Also near to hand, but sailing separately, was a minesweeper group
consisting of three minesweepers, three subchasers, and an ammunition ship.
 Somewhat farther away would be the Invasion Force Main Body, under the
command of Vice Admiral Kond Nobutake. It consisted of the other two
members of BatDiv 3– Hiei and Kongo–under Rear Admiral Mikawa Gun `ichi.
Four heavy cruisers1–Atago, Chokai, Haguro, and My k –also accompanied the
force. The screen for this powerful unit was commanded by Rear Admiral
Nishimura Sh ji aboard the light cruiser Yura, which led seven destroyers. Also
included in this group was the fine new light carrier Zuih and her plane guard
destroyer. All three of these formations–Tanaka’s, Kond ’s, and Kurita’s–were
to approach Midway from the west-southwest.
Midway was scheduled for capture on the 6th (local time), leaving a day for
the base to be put back into operation in advance of the expected sea battle with
the Americans. During this time, Nagumo’s carriers would be supporting the
invasion and simultaneously moving to the northeast of the island in preparation
for the naval battle. His force was expected to be in position to support Kond
from the north-northwest by the end of the 6th. Kond , for his part, would keep
his battleships ready to deliver backup fire support against Midway if stiff
resistance was encountered.36
The backstop to both Kond ’s and Nagumo’s forces was Yamamoto
himself and his Main Body. Centered on BatDiv 1–Yamato, Nagato, and Mutsu–
this force contained the largest guns in the fleet. It was to follow behind Nagumo
during the initial phase of the operation. Within this force would be several
smaller formations that could maneuver independently if need be. One of them,
the Special Group, consisting of seaplane tenders CHiy da and Nisshin, which
were carrying midget submarines and motor torpedo boats, respectively, to
reinforce Midway once it was captured. The second special formation, the
Carrier Group, consisted of the ancient light carrier H sh . Around all of the
elements of the Main Force would be Rear Admiral Hashimoto Shintaro’s
Screening Force, consisting of light cruiser Sendai and eight destroyers. Three
oilers accompanied the group. Once Midway was secured, the Main Body would
be in position to support Kond should the need arise.
It was strongly believed that after six months of war, the Americans were
now sufficiently weakened and demoralized that they would only sortie from
Pearl Harbor with some coaxing.37 Kond was the bait. Among other things, his
flotilla contained a pair of capital ships (Hiei and Kong ), which made it a force
worth attacking. At the same time, his two battleships were fast enough to
extricate themselves from trouble if need be. Yamamoto apparently did not want
to tip his hand by revealing his Main Body too soon, in the belief that such a
massive array of firepower would induce the Americans to stay home. In other
words, Yamamoto’s dispersal of forces was purely an attempt at deception–his
killing force would not enter scouting range of Midway until after the Americans
had themselves sortied from Pearl. In a way, his plan was almost reminiscent of
the usage of cruiser forces by both the German High Seas Fleet and the Royal
Navy in World War I to lure the enemy into range of the main battle squadrons.
Not surprisingly, having current intelligence on the American units that
would presumably be walking into the trap was crucial to the operation’s
success. Yamamoto would be aided in these efforts by a special mission
designed to assess the status of the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. Referred to
as Operation K, the Japanese would employ flying boats operating out of the
islands of Jaluit and Wotje to overfly the American fleet base on 31 May, just
before the commencement of the fleet actions.38 Kawanishi Type 2 four-engined
flying boats had performed this same mission twice before in early March. On
the first occasion, a heavy overcast on 3–4 March had made reconnaissance
impossible. During the second, on 9–10 March, American fighters from Midway
had intercepted and destroyed the Japanese plane. Yet, despite the negative
results from these two missions, not to mention the evidence that this particular
gimmick might be wearing a bit thin, Yamamoto didn’t waver from trying a
third time.
The catch to Operation K was that no Japanese aircraft, even the big
Kawanishis, had the range to fly all the way to Pearl Harbor and back without
refueling. A flying boat, however, could make good this deficiency by stopping
at some secluded place along the way to refuel. The chosen stopover had been an
uninhabited islet known as French Frigate Shoals, which lay between Midway
and Hawaii. In March, the Navy had used a submarine there to refuel the
Kawanishis, which then proceeded to Hawaii. The same approach was to be used
again on 31 May.
In addition to aerial reconnaissance, two picket lines of submarines would
be positioned across the presumed line of advance of the Americans. The
southern cordon (“A”), and northern cordon (“B”), were each composed of
seven fleet boats. However, the submarines of both groups were assigned fixed
positions, rather than being placed in patrol boxes in which they could operate
freely. Worse, the patrol lines did not have overlapping fields of vision, making
them porous indeed. This static mode of employment (which was typical of
Japanese submarine operations throughout the war) meant that the big Imperial
Navy boats could not be concentrated on enemy units with anything like the
flexibility that the Germans were currently employing in the Atlantic.39
The decisive battle, as Yamamoto envisioned it, would be fought
somewhere off Midway, with the main Japanese forces arrayed so as to intercept
the oncoming Americans. After pounding Midway, Nagumo would withdraw
and wait some five hundred miles north-northeast of Midway, with Yamamoto’s
Main Body supporting him three hundred miles to the west.40 Takasu’s
battleship force would come down from its position in the north Pacific to hover
five hundred miles north of Yamamoto. Second Mobile Striking Force, with its
two carriers, would perform a similar maneuver to position itself three hundred
miles to the east of Takasu. Kond ’s force would supply the bait to draw the
Americans out of hiding at Pearl Harbor and lure them north, with the Japanese
heavy forces lurking out of range of American reconnaissance aircraft and
submarines.
If all went according to plan, the Americans would appear off Midway after
the landings had taken place. Yamamoto presumed that the Americans would
sortie west from Oahu and then head north so as to be able to ambush the
exposed Kond as he trailed his coat near the island. Interestingly, it appears that
Combined Fleet’s opinion was that the Americans would bring not only their
carriers, but also their few remaining battleships to the fray.41 It was further
assumed that the carriers would operate separately from their battleship-centric
Main Body, screening them from the west-northwest. This was a fairly
doctrinaire interpretation of how the Americans would maneuver their forces,
with the carriers presumably governed by the movements of the slower
battleship force operating in the rear. In other words, it assumed that the
Americans thought their battle squadrons were capable of making a meaningful
contribution to a modern carrier battle, as Yamamoto believed his own could.
In this, the Japanese were projecting their own beliefs on their opponent, a
classic failing of many military plans. Having manufactured roles for their own
battleships, the Japanese believed that the enemy would do likewise. However,
what the Japanese couldn’t know was that the Americans had by now totally
discarded the idea of using their older battlewagons in conjunction with fast
carriers. Yamamoto had only himself to blame for this radical transformation of
American naval thought, as his triumph at Pearl Harbor had demonstrated
unequivocally to his enemies the total vulnerability of such forces in the face of
modern airpower.
Once the Americans were detected, Takasu’s battle group would move
south to join Yamamoto. On the eastern flank, Nagumo would move south to
engage the American fleet as well. It was expected that attrition from the
submarines, coupled with air strikes from the carriers, would weaken the
Americans sufficiently that they could be engaged and annihilated by the
Japanese battleships. In a sense, Yamamoto’s plan represented a curious
reversion to a more gunpower-oriented philosophy, relegating Nagumo’s carriers
to an attritional role on par with the submarine force.
Taken together, Operations AL and MI represented the commitment of
almost the entirety of the Imperial Japanese Navy–all of its carriers, all of its
battleships, all but four of its heavy cruisers, and the bulk of its lesser
combatants. Twenty-eight admirals would lead these forces into battle, and they
would log more miles and consume more fuel in this single operation than was
normally used in an entire year.42
It was planned that once the battle was won, Nagumo’s carriers would retire
to Truk between 16 and 20 June.43 The battleships would return to home waters,
or head north to assist Operation AL. Thereafter, operations would be launched
to consolidate the fruits of victory. Truk would be the jumping-off location for
further planned incursions into the southwest Pacific, with New Caledonia, Fiji,
and Samoa slated for occupation in July. In other words, in the interval between
5 April, when Admiral Nagano had acceded to Yamamoto’s plans (and the
Southwest Pacific had been ostensibly removed from consideration), and early
May (when the detailed battle plan was to be war-gamed), Naval GHQ’s
preferred strategic option had once again been reintegrated into the Navy’s
overall strategic plan, albeit as a follow-on operation. August was to see the
occupation of Johnston Island, as well as the first invasions of the Australian
landmass itself. Last to go would be Hawaii, now shorn of any sort of mobile
support, and increasingly isolated by Japanese outposts. It was a breathtaking
vision indeed. Yet its grandeur was betrayed by fundamental flaws in planning.
Readers may be pardoned at this juncture if they are somewhat dizzied by
the array of geographic objectives, formations, admirals, and ships that paraded
through the schemes for Operations AL and MI. Indeed, this is the first and most
obvious drawback to the plan drafted by Kuroshima and ratified by Yamamoto–
it was almost incomprehensibly complex. More than a dozen different surface
formations, and numerous groups of submarines, were expected to participate in
this tightly scripted operation. However, the expectation that these formations
could coordinate their actions in such a fashion was ill founded.
Byzantine intricacy was a trademark of prewar Japanese naval strategy.
Fleet exercises often featured exquisitely coordinated maneuvers on the part of
the Imperial Navy being met with conveniently inept countermoves by the oafish
Americans, who never failed to go lowing obediently to their choreographed
slaughter.44 Yamamoto, far from having steered his way clear of this strategic
dreamland, had instead erected a monument to it. He concocted a plan that
dissipated his own superiority of numbers such that the essential core of the
operation–the neutralization of Midway–was to be performed by a mere twenty-
two warships.45 This was about a tenth of the total number of vessels he
envisioned scattering across the breadth of the Pacific in pursuit of various
objectives, many of which were completely irrelevant to the success or failure of
the centerpiece of the plan.
The Aleutians operation stands at the top of this list of frivolous goals. By
anyone’s measure, the reduction of Dutch Harbor was a poor excuse to send the
fifty-odd warships of the First Distribution to the north Pacific. In light of the
fact that Operation AL was not even intended as a feint, it is difficult to
understand devoting any resources to such a strategic irrelevancy. If the
American carriers were destroyed off of Midway, then the Aleutians could be
captured at will. If Nagumo failed, however, then in the long run the Aleutians
could not be defended even if captured. As it developed, Attu and Kiska were to
be the trifling consolation prizes for the failure of Operation MI. Their loss
meant almost nothing to the Americans. Indeed, when he was informed of Attu’s
fall after the Battle of Midway had already transpired, U.S. Navy secretary W.
Frank Knox offered a pithy indictment of Yamamoto’s plan by remarking that
“Japan was either unable to understand modern war or not qualified to take part
in it.”46
It must be emphasized that blame for this strategic faux pas must be shared
by not only Yamamoto, but by Naval GHQ as well. It was GHQ that appended
the Aleutians concept to Yamamoto’s offensive as the price for his ill-won gains
in the realm of planning prerogative. If Yamamoto’s downstream planning was
flawed, Admiral Nagano and company had only themselves to blame for
demanding that he throw good assets at a fundamentally bad idea. Yamamoto,
though, apparently didn’t put up much of a fuss at the notion, such was his
confidence in his ability to beat the Americans.
The larger issue of dispersal of Japan’s forces–of which Operation AL was
only a symptom–has, of course, been minutely examined in earlier histories of
the battle. Certain points bear repeating here, though. As was mentioned, the
prevailing opinion within Combined Fleet, and a belief that Yamamoto
apparently shared, was that the American fleet was a beaten, demoralized outfit
that would need to be coaxed toward its own annihilation. The corollary to this
was that the need for deception outweighed the need for placing forces where
they could be mutually supporting. Only by using deception would Yamamoto
be able to bring his array of warships to battle without spooking the Americans
into remaining in Hawaii.
 In this age of unquestioned American military hegemony, it is difficult to
understand how any nation could have characterized the U.S. Navy in such a
fashion. Yet, it must be remembered that in 1942 Japan had only a very limited
context for judging the character of America’s fighting forces. Indeed, in Japan’s
two previous wars–against the Chinese and Russians–it had been up to the
Japanese to precipitate many of the naval encounters, despite being the
underdog. The Imperial Navy was thus used to being the aggressor against
reluctant opponents.
The first four months of the Pacific conflict had confirmed certain aspects
of this Japanese self-image. The Allies had been handed an unbroken string of
defeats since the inception of hostilities. If their bravery was not in question, it
was apparent to all that their equipment, doctrine, and training were in many
ways not equal to Japan’s. And while American morale had never broken, there
was no question that American military prowess to date had been somewhat
lacking. Given the beating the U.S. Navy had taken thus far, it was hardly
surprising that the Japanese might have thought the Americans would be
reluctant to fight them on the high seas. Faced with such a foe, Yamamoto might
well have thought that he was emulating the ancient Chinese military sage Sun
Tzu’s ninth maxim concerning weaknesses and strengths: By making his
dispositions “Subtle and insubstantial, the expert leaves no trace; divinely
mysterious, he is inaudible.” Yamamoto would have been well advised to read
ahead to the chapter’s thirteenth maxim, which his opponent Nimitz would
adroitly use to destroy him in the coming days: “If I am able to determine the
enemy’s dispositions while at the same time I conceal my own, then I can
concentrate and he must divide. And if I concentrate while he divides, I can use
my entire strength to attack a fraction of his.”47
This points to the first in the catalog of Yamamoto’s flaws as a
commander–his inability to correctly fathom the true nature of his enemy. He
had already failed in this regard once before, at Pearl Harbor. There, his passion
for disabling the American fleet with a swift strike at the outset of hostilities had
blinded him to the fact that attacking Hawaii by surprise would guarantee the
implacable hatred of America. Now, during the planning for Midway, he
likewise failed to discern the moral character of the enemy and its willingness to
fight. Had Yamamoto correctly gauged the will of his foe, he might have
realized that what was called for was less subtlety and more in the way of brute
strength.
Yamamoto then compounded this error by creating unnecessary subsidiary
missions within the overall battle plan. One cannot fail to get the impression that
many of the forces involved in both AL and MI seemed to have been put there
almost out of a simple desire to find something for them to do. In fact, this may
not be far from the truth. Admiral Ugaki remarked in his diary on 3 March that
he feared that “the morale of the Main Body is stale after a long stay in home
waters. I have encouraged them, but we must … engage in some operational
action.”48 Given this situation, Yamamoto may well have felt that make-work
was better than no work at all. Yet of the eleven battleships deployed, only the
four fast battleships in Nagumo’s and Hond ’s forces would actually be
providing any real support to the crux of the operation. And as it developed,
Kond ’s pair would never really be involved in any meaningful way. This left
the seven remaining slower battlewagons to provide “distant cover” for other
groups.
This was neither the first nor last time that the notion of distant cover would
rear its misshapen head in Japanese battle planning–indeed, it plagued their
operations throughout the war. As it turned out, “distant” too often meant
“nonexistent,” in that the forces meant to be covered were too remote to be
succored when needed. This had very nearly proven the Japanese undoing at the
Battle of Java Sea in March, where a Japanese cruiser force supporting an
invasion convoy had been caught out of position by an Allied squadron. Only the
speediness of Japan’s cruisers had saved the day, allowing them to make up time
on their slower charges. Likewise, the same notion of distant cover was to cost
them the services of the light carrier Shoho in the not too distant future.
It would be tempting to point to the Aleutians Force Main Body as being
another poster child for this concept. Hosogaya’s anorexic formation–whose
warships were outnumbered by noncombatant vessels five to three–could barely
fend off an attack on itself, let alone pull anyone else’s bacon from the fire.
However, it must be recalled that, according to the First Distribution of
Operation AL, the Main Body was little more than a placeholder for a larger
force that would come into being in the Second Distribution.
Takasu’s Aleutians Screening Force, centered on BatDiv 2, was perhaps a
more appropriate target for this criticism. With the four oldest battleships in the
Japanese inventory “covering” the two misfit carriers of Dai-ni Kid Butai,
Takasu’s force could not by itself provide a credible threat to any American
carrier task force that somehow ranged into northern waters. Nor, with a top
speed of around twenty-four knots, could it run away quickly enough to save
itself should the wolf show up at its own doorstep. Had he encountered
American carriers, Takasu would have suffered the same fate as the Pearl Harbor
battleships, the only difference being the greater depth and lower ambient
temperature of their respective watery graves. Of course, it was Yamamoto’s
intention that they never be brought to battle in northern waters at all. The fact
that Takasu’s group was not even administratively attached to Operation AL in a
formal manner reinforces this impression.49
It is difficult to understand why Yamamoto didn’t simply put Takasu’s
battlewagons in the Main Body and have done with. As it was, Takasu was
poorly positioned to unite with the Main Body when the main battle began. The
fact that Takasu was hundreds of miles north necessarily limited Yamamoto’s
speed of reaction if and when the Americans were detected. Should the
Americans deviate from their script, Yamamoto might be forced to go into battle
without BatDiv 2’s gun power. By standing equidistant between two friendly
forces, Takasu in essence supported neither.
Yamamoto’s own Main Body, despite its much heavier gun power, lay in a
similarly poor position to provide support if called upon. With at least six
hundred miles between him and Nagumo’s fleet carriers (according to the
original plan), he would be at least two days steaming away from any trouble
they might run into. However, in Yamamoto’s mind, the likelihood of this was
low. Nagumo’s opponent in the opening round of the battle would be solitary
and static–namely, Midway Island. Obviously, dictating the range to an island
was much easier than doing the same with an enemy task force. If Nagumo got
in trouble, he could always fall back on the Main Body–Midway wasn’t going
anywhere.
Not surprisingly, many postwar commentators have criticized Yamamoto’s
placement of the Main Body relative to Nagumo. However, the remedy proposed
by these same commentators–the direct integration of the Main Body with the
Striking Force–would actually have made little operational sense, even if
Yamamoto had decided to dispense with subtlety. Yamato, at twenty-seven knots
the fastest of the Main Body’s three battleships, would perhaps have been able to
keep up with Kid Butai during a battle, although she was a full knot slower than
the slowest carrier in the group (Kaga). However, Nagato and Mutsu were two
knots slower than Yamato, and almost ten knots slower than Hiry and S ry .
As such, they would have been more of a hindrance than a help in any situation
where the ability to maneuver rapidly was called for. Thus, direct integration of
the two forces was not the right answer.
Had direct support of Nagumo’s carriers with heavy gunfire been needed, it
would have made much more sense to have maintained the Main Body as a
separate formation, but also to have kept it close to Nagumo. Yamamoto could
have trailed Nagumo at a short distance, so as to be partially shielded by
Nagumo’s own combat air patrol (CAP) from American air attacks coming from
the island. Alternately, and more boldly, the Main Body could have been placed
in advance of the carrier force, providing the Americans with a tempting target,
and thereby providing an airpower sump for the enemy.
All of these musings, however, miss the real point. In truth, supporting
Nagumo was strictly secondary to the Main Body’s intended mission of
destroying the American fleet during the later stages of the battle. This, in turn,
points to a central truth about Yamamoto’s planning. If the premise is accepted
that the Americans would have to be lured from Pearl Harbor in order to create
the needed battle, there was no way to construct an operational plan whose
distribution of warships was both deceptive and mutually supporting. The two
goals were antithetical. Yamamoto knew he couldn’t have it both ways, and he
willingly sacrificed mutual support to the perceived need for stealth. In a very
real sense, this one assumption about the nature of the enemy doomed the battle
plan from the start.
Notwithstanding Yamamoto’s penchant for strategic deception, the
arrangement of the various invasion forces approaching from the southwest is
also difficult to understand. All were ultimately intended to arrive at roughly the
same time off of Midway, albeit with Kond ’s more powerful group heading up
the van during the final approach. Thereafter, Kond would head southeast
without his weaker charges. For all this labor, all four groups could just as easily
have sailed together from either Saipan or Truk and spared themselves the
difficulty of coordination while simultaneously providing a greater degree of
mutual protection.
Likewise, directly incorporating the four fast, powerful cruisers of CruDiv 7
(Mogami, Kumano, Suzuya, and Mikuma) into Nagumo’s force would have
greatly increased his odds of success at little increased risk. Operating directly
with Kid Butai, CruDiv 7 could have contributed greatly enhanced antiaircraft
and surface gun power during the actual battle and still have been easily
detached to bombard Midway when the time came. More important, the dozen or
so long-range scout aircraft carried by these cruisers would have improved
Nagumo’s scouting capabilities immensely.50 Including CruDiv 7 would have
made it possible to more than double the number of scout aircraft that were fated
to be used on the morning of 5 June and commensurately increased the number
of aircraft in reserve for following up enemy contacts. Clearly, too, stripping
CruDiv 7 from the immediate vicinity of Tanaka’s invasion convoy hardly
exposed the latter to greater danger, as Kid Butai was the final guarantor of its
safety in any case.
A commander’s job is to orchestrate and direct the three major dimensions
of combat–space, time, and force. From the preceding remarks, it can be seen
that Yamamoto’s plan failed to address the concept of space in a flexible
manner. In his attempt to be “divinely mysterious,” he had rendered much of his
fleet purposeless through dispersion. Many of his forces were positioned in such
a way that they could accomplish nothing more meaningful than parading about
in the Pacific in lieu of fighting. If they were called on to react to unforeseen
developments, they could not do so.
What, then, of the other two dimensions–time and force? In these as well,
Yamamoto’s plan suffered from alarming deficiencies. Nagumo’s schedule
required him to begin subduing Midway on the 4th, support landings on Kure on
the 6th, followed by more landings on Midway on the 7th, and then be ready to
fight a major fleet engagement immediately thereafter. In the course of these
operations, Kure was to be placed in operation as a seaplane base within a day of
its capture, and Midway restored to fighting order the day after that to be ready
to support Nagumo on the 8th. This was, to put it mildly, cutting things a little
fine.
Kure Island would have been relatively easy to put back into service–
seaplanes require less in the way of facilities for operation. But Midway’s
airstrip was a completely different matter. Given that Nagumo was to conduct air
raids against it from the 4th through the 6th; it hardly seemed likely that the strip
would be captured intact or even in working order. This was doubly true if
CruDiv 7’s guns were actually needed to support the landing operations. The
Americans could also be expected to sabotage whatever they could before the
island’s capture. At the very least, the aviation fuel stores would be torched, and
without them, there would be no flight operations from Eastern Island. All in all,
despite construction workers accompanying the combat troops, the odds of
Midway being transformed literally overnight into a workable base were remote.
In addition, by the very strictures of the timetable being imposed on him,
Nagumo’s freedom of movement was grossly degraded. There was little
possibility of his being able to meet unforeseen contingencies while still
maintaining the strict tempo of operations the plan called for. No admiral would
want to see his options limited in this fashion. Worse yet, the tight timing of
Yamamoto’s plan was predicated on the belief that the Americans were unaware
of Japanese intentions. If that precondition did not hold up, Nagumo’s might be
in trouble. And despite all the power arrayed around him in “distant support,” he
would be essentially on his own to deal with whatever problems arose. However,
with six carriers, Nagumo was assumed to have the capability to deal with any
American force that appeared–freedom of movement would simply be
compensated for by superior numbers of aircraft.
This, then, was the linchpin upon which the entire operation hung: force.
For all of Yamamoto’s defective planning–his obsession with concealment and
deception, shotgun approach to objectives, frivolous distribution of assets, and
rigid timetable–his operational scheme could probably still have been made good
so long as he retained his final trump card: a fully constituted Kid Butai, with
all six of its fleet carriers. In the final analysis, since no one was in a position to
support them anyway, these were the only ships in the entire operation that really
mattered. But with six flattops at hand, it would have been difficult for Nagumo
to lose. The Americans would have been hard-pressed to assemble sufficient
numbers of aircraft to oppose them, even with Midway’s thrown into the mix.
The three Japanese carrier divisions between them would bring more than 350
planes into the battle, the equivalent of about five American carriers.51 It was
known that the Americans could barely match that number of flight decks in
April 1942, even if Wasp were in the Pacific. Even in the unlikely event that the
Americans were able to bring all their carriers together, they had never operated
them as a group before, whereas the Japanese had extensive experience fighting
together as a unit. As long as this final variable in the equation held up, Nagumo
would have been in a very good position to emerge victorious.
However, shortly after having won the April staff battles, Yamamoto had
altered his basic operational designs in a way that jeopardized his final trump
card. Apparently as yet another quid quo pro to the Naval General Staff for his
having run roughshod over them, Yamamoto agreed to lend significant naval
support to 4th Fleet’s plans for operations in the southwest Pacific. Admiral
Inoue was still determined to capture Port Moresby in New Guinea, as was
Naval GHQ. Yamamoto wasn’t in favor of Operation MO (as it was known), but
he reasoned that if Port Moresby were captured in early May, whatever carriers
were used there could still be returned in time for Nagumo’s complete force to
be reassembled in home waters by mid-May. If so, they could still sally forth on
Nagumo’s designated sortie date for Midway, which had been set for 26 May.52
At first, Combined Fleet was of a mind to send just Kaga southward.
Having missed the Indian Ocean operation because of the need to repair hull
damage suffered in a mooring incident in Palau, she was already in home waters
and had just been refitted. This would give Inoue a total of about one and a half
carriers, since he already had the brand-new light carrier Sh h under his
command.53 Inoue, however, raised strenuous objections to this. The Japanese
did not know that the Americans had used two fleet carriers in their 10 March
raids against Lae and Salamaua–they suspected that they had been attacked by a
combination of Saratoga’s air group and land-based air operating from
Australia. However, whatever the makeup of the enemy’s forces, it was apparent
that the Allies now had substantial air forces in the area. It was unlikely that the
veteran Kaga and a rookie lightweight like Sh h could face up to serious
opposition if it should materialize again. As a result, Combined Fleet relented
and on 12 April issued orders telling CarDiv 5 to proceed via Mako to Truk at
the termination of their Indian Ocean sortie. They would be ready to participate
in Operation MO thereafter. Yamamoto reasoned that Sh kaku and Zuikaku
probably couldn’t get themselves into too much trouble by participating in
Inoue’s sideshow and might even garner some additional training in the process.
In the event, they got quite a bit more than they bargained for.
The utter illogic of Yamamoto’s 12 April decision has been commented on
before, but it bears repeating here. By any rational standard, it was absolutely
essential to have CarDiv 5 in Nagumo’s force if it was to be assured of material
superiority at Midway. In effect, the feasibility of Operation MI now depended
on whether or not Operation MO came off without CarDiv 5 suffering
significant losses. Taking this gamble was a huge mistake, as it held the more
important of the two operations hostage to the subordinate’s success. What this
suggests is that Yamamoto had not so much won the right to set the Navy’s
strategy as simply to have his plan go first, and even then with provisos. In
effect, none of the competing strategic options that he had supposedly
suppressed had actually been removed from the mix–they had merely been
shoved to the end of the line in terms of timing.
Though no one in the fleet would have been willing to admit it, CarDiv 5,
despite its relatively junior status, represented Japan’s current margin of
superiority over the American Navy. No more real fleet carriers were slated to be
delivered to the Navy until Taih , then building, was completed in 1944.54 In
other words, the Japanese carrier force was fixed for the foreseeable future. The
Japanese believed they currently outnumbered the U.S. Navy eleven carriers (six
heavy and five light) to six (five heavy and one light).55 If the Imperial Navy
was to preserve for itself the freedom of action that had thus far characterized its
operations, it was essential to also conserve its numerical superiority,
particularly in heavy carriers. Every senior Japanese officer knew that this
current numerical ascendancy was bound to be transient. The Americans were
known to have more than a dozen Essex-class fleet carriers building, in addition
to several light fleet units comparable to Sh h and Zuih . Japan could not hope
to match this output. Therefore, Japan’s naval leadership needed to manage its
window of opportunity so as to maximize the utility of its assets while this
superiority lasted. Such was Japanese confidence in the proficiency of their
military, though, that they apparently felt no pangs of uncertainty in committing
CarDiv 5 to the south.
What the Japanese failed to realize was that “maximizing utility” did not
mean splitting up one’s forces. Attempting multiple operations simultaneously
held out the hope of more rapid conquest. But it was also very risky, because it
opened the door to the possibility of one of the smaller formations being
destroyed by a locally superior American force. If that happened, Japan’s
advantage in carriers would be prematurely destroyed as well. And once the
Imperial Navy lost numerical superiority it could never regain it. Maximizing
utility, then, really involved applying the intellectual rigor necessary to
determine which operations were truly worth conducting. Unfortunately,
intellectual honesty and analytic exactitude were characteristics notably absent
from the strategic discourses within the Imperial Navy at this time.
Taking these observations regarding CarDiv 5 to their logical conclusion,
Yamamoto should have realized that there were, in fact, precisely two types of
objectives in the Pacific–those that were worth attacking with all six of Japan’s
fleet carriers, and those worth attacking with none. Until the enemy’s carriers
were destroyed, there was no middle ground on this matter. Japan, which had
opened the war with a massed carrier strike across unprecedented distances,
certainly ought to have been cognizant that the same trick could be played in
reverse. The American carriers–all of them–had already demonstrated that they
could appear practically anywhere on the perimeter of the empire. There were no
“safe” missions such as Combined Fleet envisioned Operation MO to be. If the
Americans were operating in force in the area, then CarDiv 5 and Operation MO
would be placed in jeopardy, which in turn placed Operation MI in jeopardy as
well. By the same token, if Operation MO was truly important enough to support
with all of Kid Butai, then the overall operational schedule needed to be
adjusted to reflect these realities. It was imperative that the Japanese carrier force
applied its strategic potential at maximum strength everywhere it went. This
meant accepting an operational tempo that afforded the carriers time between
missions to rest and refit. In essence, the Japanese needed to recognize that their
real problem was not one of resource allocation between multiple objectives, but
rather scheduling multiple operations around a single, finite resource. Neither
Yamamoto nor Naval GHQ apparently ever apprehended this logic. Or if they
did, they were so overconfident that they simply failed to notice their peril.
Either way, the Imperial Navy was now attempting too much in too many places,
and with too few assets.
4

Ill Omens

If the Doolittle raid had a positive effect on American morale, it also soaked
up the services of half of Admiral Chester W. Nimitz’s available carriers at a
time when events in the South Pacific were coming rapidly to a head. American
intelligence had become aware of Inoue’s forthcoming operation in the Coral
Sea, and Nimitz had to scramble to meet this new threat.
The foundation for Nimitz’s forthcoming deployments was a major
intelligence coup, one that would influence the course of the entire Pacific war.
Unbeknownst to the Japanese, the Americans had broken the Imperial Japanese
Navy’s (IJN’s) most important operational code–known as JN 25–in late March
1942. As a result, American cryptanalysts were becoming more successful in
deciphering enough of the IJN’s operational signals traffic to discern the overall
intent of the Imperial Navy’s plans.
The nature of American code breaking was not such that the U.S. Navy
could simply read complete messages at will. They could only siphon a small
number of transmissions from the veritable river of coded Japanese traffic. On
an average day, the Americans were only intercepting around 60 percent of the
Imperial Navy’s transmissions. Of those, only about 40 percent of the messages
could be analyzed, because of lack of time and human resources. And even then
American cryptographers were rarely able to make out more than 10–15 percent
of the code groups within any given transmission.1 Thus, code breaking in itself,
though a vitally important advantage, was hardly a panacea. However, when
coupled with traffic analysis–the art of deriving operational intelligence by
deducing the identity of enemy call signs and then monitoring the pattern and
extent of their radio transmissions–the Americans had gained a good sense for
which messages were most likely to be important.
As early as 9 April, American intelligence noted the recent transmission of
orders to Kaga instructing her to be in the New Britain area by the end of the
month.2 The following day, they deduced that another carrier (misidentified as
Ryukaku)3 was to be used in the operation as well. Additional information
suggested an accumulation of shipping and air assets at Truk and Rabaul. As a
result, the Americans began to suspect that something was afoot in the South
Pacific. In the opinion of the analysts, the strategic town of Port Moresby,
located on the southern coast of New Guinea, was the likely objective.
On the basis of this information, Nimitz decided to dispatch Lexington to
the South Pacific in mid-April to back up Yorktown, which was already there.
The problem was that with Hornet and Enterprise committed to Doolittle’s
operation, he had too few carriers to oppose a major Japanese offensive, should
all of Kid Butai be present. However, the fall of Port Moresby would place
northern Australia in immediate peril, and Nimitz was determined to defend his
southern communications lines. By 1 May, both Yorktown and Lexington were
on station in the Coral Sea, with Hornet and Enterprise slated to join them by
14–16 May.4 But for the Doolittle raid it is likely that the Japanese would have
found CarDiv 5 opposed by not two, but four American carriers. Had that
occurred, it is possible that the Japanese would have been presented with an
altogether more decisive battle than they had envisioned.

Meanwhile, at Hashirajima, events rapidly moved forward. The capstone to the

planning process took place on 1 May on board the battleship Yamato. She was
to play host to a series of war games designed to solidify the operational aspects
of MI. Here, in a series of map exercises conducted until the 5th, the operational
plan was put to the test in front of the command staffs of the various task forces.
The forward mess spaces were cleared of their normal furnishings, and a large
table surrounded by chairs was put in place.5 Individual cabins around the ship
were used as command posts for the operational staffs involved in the actual
operation. At each, the unit’s commander or chief of staff behaved as if he were
standing on the bridge of his respective flagship, issuing orders that were relayed
by runners to other commands in mimicry of radio communications.6
War gaming is an old and respected adjunct to the formulation of military
planning, allowing participants to explore issues and make revisions to their
plans accordingly. Whatever rules are used, the emphasis during gaming is
supposed to be on honestly identifying and correcting errors in operational
concepts and preparing contingency plans. Yet from the get-go, the farcical
nature of Operation MI’s games was apparent to everyone present. Yamamoto
clearly intended this conference not so much as a true exercise, but as a rubber
stamp.
During the games, Yamamoto’s chief of staff, Admiral Ugaki, frequently
played the role of umpire. In that capacity, he consistently passed down rulings
that glossed over the difficulties encountered by the Japanese. In this effort,
Ugaki was aided by a lack of preparation for the exercise on the part of the
various staff commands. The planning for the operation had proceeded at such a
speed in April that proper briefing documents had only lately been distributed to
the participants. Thus, the officers now on board Yamato had had very little
opportunity to do their homework beforehand. Whether this was a deliberate
maneuver on the part of Yamamoto and Ugaki, or simply a reflection of MI
being thrown together too quickly, is unknown. The practical effects, however,
were identical–the staff officers of the subordinate commands were in an
inherently weaker position to criticize the plan’s basic assumptions. As a result,
they mostly went along with what they were told.
The attitude of many of the participants, moreover, was that this exercise
was little more than a formality. In contrast to the assiduous studies before Pearl
Harbor, these games revealed a certain sloppiness. In the words of Nagasawa
Ko, who went on to become a rear admiral in the Japanese Naval Self-Defense
Forces after the war, the general tenor of the games was one of “This is a
necessary drill, but don’t worry, we’ll take care of anything that comes along.”7
An attitude of bored indifference permeated the various commands, most
notably that of First Air Fleet.8 Nagumo opposed the operation but felt powerless
to stop it. At a wedding that May, he remarked to a friend that his superiors
“spoke ill” of him already and that if he actively opposed the operation his
bravery would be called into question. All things considered, he went on to say,
he “would rather go to Midway and die than be branded as a coward.”9
What Nagumo thought of the proceedings on board Yamato is not recorded,
which is in itself interesting. As “point man” in the operation, he would have
been within his rights to ask the sharpest questions of anyone. Yet, he apparently
voiced no concerns whatsoever. It must be recalled, though, that Nagumo was in
a weak position to object to Yamamoto’s plans in any case. He had been
upbraided by his superior for his perceived lack of aggressiveness at Pearl
Harbor. And he was clearly out of his element in discussing the complexities of
air operations–Genda had to handle these questions for him.
If Nagumo was guilty of being withdrawn, it shortly became clear that
Yamamoto and his staff were engaged in being actively disingenuous. The
character of the games was established early on when an officer in charge of
playing the Red forces (representing the American Navy) submitted a course of
action that closely resembled the tactics that would be used by the Americans in
the actual battle. Having shown up sooner than anticipated, while the invasion of
Midway was in process, Red proceeded to attack Nagumo’s flank. The Japanese
carriers were heavily hit, and the invasion was placed in great difficulties. At this
juncture, the table judge demurred, asserting that such American tactics were
impossible, and reversed the damage to three Japanese carriers. Despite the
emotional supplications of the Red player, his plea was overturned and his
tactics were recast along lines more in keeping with Yamamoto’s vision as to
when and where the foe should show himself.10
In a second incident, the Japanese side was playing through the
ramifications of an attack by American land-based aircraft against Nagumo’s
force. The table judge for the event, Lt. Commander Okumiya Masatake, rolled
dice to determine that nine hits had been scored, resulting in both Akagi and
Kaga being sunk. Ugaki then personally intervened to revise the number of hits
downward to three, leaving Kaga the sole victim of the American attack. Later
in the exercise, Kaga was allowed to reappear as a participant in the follow-up
operations against Fiji and New Caledonia.11 Both of these events reinforced the
opinion of many of the assembled officers that the operation was fundamentally
flawed. However, it was clear that the commander in chief was not prepared to
listen to reason on these matters.
Interestingly, near the end of the exercises Yamamoto himself asked what
Nagumo would do if an enemy carrier force appeared on his flank while he was
engaged in operations against Midway. All eyes turned to Air Officer Genda,
whose internal reaction might well have been, “If that happens, we’re in terrible
trouble.” But what he uttered instead was a famous Japanese military phrase:
“Gaishu Isshoku (One touch of the armored gauntlet!),” meaning roughly “We’ll
wipe them out!”12 Captain Miwa then rose to declare that, because Japanese
defensive power was “unbreakable,” the matter was of small concern.13 Coming
from two officers in a Navy whose renunciation of all things defensive bordered
on the fanatical, these fanciful answers put a capstone on four days of scripted
silliness and underlined the air of unreality that pervaded the operational
planning as a whole.
Yamamoto was apparently somewhat put out that First Air Fleet’s staff
didn’t have a credible answer to his question. But as another student of the battle
has pointed out, he had little grounds to be upset at the failure of a subordinate to
supply an original answer in the midst of an exercise that had been so heavily
choreographed as to be meaningless.14 Having done his best to quash all
criticism, Yamamoto had thrown honesty and creative thinking out the window
as well. Yamamoto did take this opportunity, though, to interject an instruction
to Nagumo and his staff that they should reserve at least half of Kid Butai’s
attack aircraft in readiness for an antishipping strike should the need arise.15
However, these orders were verbally transmitted to First Air Fleet; nothing was
ever put in writing. At the time, the instructions seemed clear enough.16 As
events would prove, though, their intent would be far from clear-cut a month
later.
At the end of the exercise, the situation remained much as before–
Yamamoto’s battle plan was unchanged in almost all particulars. The games had
served as a monologue. There had been no intellectual discourse, no learning;
the entire affair had been a mockery of professional staff work. The net result
was that Nagumo would go to battle armed with practically nothing in the way
of realistic contingency plans. Whatever difficulties arose would be his to
handle, alone.

Only two days after the games concluded, word came back from Admiral Inoue
and CarDiv 5 that a pair of American carriers had been engaged in the Coral Sea.
The initial assessment of the battle’s results was mixed. Light carrier Sh h ,
operating separately from the fleet carriers, had been attacked and sunk by
American naval aircraft. In the exchanges that followed, the Japanese had
attacked both American flattops, which they identified as Yorktown and
Saratoga. It was believed that they had been left in a sinking condition.
However, there was no positive confirmation of these losses. As it developed,
Lexington had indeed been sunk. But Yorktown, despite heavy damage, was able
to escape.
In return for these successes, the costs to CarDiv 5 had been high. Sh kaku
was badly hit by three bombs, which wrecked her flight deck, started several
fires, and killed 108 crewmen. The Japanese were fortunate that she was not
only one of the sturdiest Imperial Navy warships afloat, but also that she had few
aircraft on board at the time of the attack. Nevertheless, she could no longer
conduct flight operations and was forced to retire. Zuikaku, though undamaged,
was effectively rendered hors de combat by aircraft losses. Worse, the operation
to secure Port Moresby had to be abandoned, much to the disgust of Combined
Fleet’s staff, who wanted the operation to continue despite CarDiv 5’s losses.
As cooler heads prevailed and more information came in regarding the
encounter, Yamamoto and Ugaki took stock of the situation. Ugaki noted certain
disquieting implications of the battle for future operations. In his diary entry for
7 May, he wrote: “A dream of great success has been shattered. . . . When we
expect enemy raids, can’t we employ the forces in a little more unified way?
After all, not a little [of the present setback] should be attributed to the
insufficiency of air reconnaissance. We should keep this in mind.”17
Prophetic words indeed. Yet, Ugaki and his chief on board Yamato
apparently missed the larger implications of Coral Sea, namely, that the last
shred of operational legitimacy underpinning Operation MI plan had just been
destroyed. Nagumo would no longer have his trump card to play should the need
arise. Even assuming, as the Japanese did, that both the American carriers had
been sunk at Coral Sea, the U.S. Navy could still potentially have as many as
three more available to them in the Pacific–Enterprise, Hornet, and Wasp.
Indeed, it was clear from the Doolittle raid that the Americans had been
operating at least another pair of flight decks besides the ones encountered in the
Coral Sea. Kid Butai would no longer be bringing six carriers to Midway,
although it was not clear that Zuikaku would be unable to participate in the
coming operation until she reported her air group losses more fully on 14 May.
Given that the Americans might have as many as three fleet carriers and
Midway’s air complement at the scene of the forthcoming battle, this meant that
there could be no guarantee of numerical superiority for Kid Butai.
This should have been of grave concern to Combined Fleet, but evidently it
was not. In fact, Combined Fleet’s staff, notwithstanding having received word
that Sh kaku and Zuikaku had been damaged in what was supposed to have been
a sideshow, bitterly condemned Inoue and the commander of the carrier striking
force (Vice Admiral Takagi Takeo) for failing to continue offensive operations
despite the very real possibility of losing its two newest fleet carriers. Such a
reflexive inclination toward the offensive points again to a complete lack of
perspective within the Imperial Navy. It was as if the mere act of attacking was
more important than fighting in a manner that held out the best possibility of
success.
For their part, the men of CarDivs 1 and 2 were treating Coral Sea as a
victory, as the superficial evidence suggested it was. If CarDiv 5 had been
handled a bit roughly in the process, it could be chalked up to its relatively junior
status. The joke in the wardrooms ran that “if the sons of the concubine
[meaning Sh kaku and Zuikaku] could win the victory, the sons of legal wives
should find no rivals in the world.”18 This revealed a rather condescending, and
wholly unwarranted, view of the relative skill of CarDiv 5, not to mention a
misreading of the true importance of the losses Kid Butai had just suffered.
With Sh kaku and Zuikaku out of the picture, a serious reappraisal of
Operation MI was called for. Yet nothing of the sort occurred. Ugaki’s diary
reveals no mention of concern that his superior’s designs might have been
somehow awry now that a third of Nagumo’s airpower had suddenly been
rendered unusable. When Sh kaku limped into Kure on 17 May, Admiral Ugaki
went on board to visit the wounded. He commented on his feelings of pity for
the men, many of whom were terribly burned. He might well have reflected on
what CarDiv 5’s experiences portended for Midway.
In all truth, the results at Coral Sea should have given Ugaki and
Yamamoto all the warning they needed that this was not the same war as five
months ago, or even one month ago. Indeed, a perceptive observer would have
noticed a number of worrying trends revealed by the battle of 7–8 May. For one
thing, American carriers had been lurking when no one expected them to be
there. With their unwelcome appearance, Japan’s dispersal of forces in the face
of a mobile enemy had just been shown for what it was–an invitation to
piecemeal destruction of valuable assets. In this case, the asset in question had
been a light carrier, which hardly constituted a crushing setback. But the amount
of American ordnance that had hit Sh h would have sent any two Japanese fleet
carriers to the bottom in short order, had they been present to receive it.
Equally ominous was the fact that American carrier pilots had been shown
to be qualitatively different from much of the opposition the Japanese had faced
thus far. American naval aviators didn’t shy away from combat. They flew
aggressively and were certainly more skillful than many of the Allied aircraft
over Borneo, Java, and Malaya had been. The U.S. Navy’s primary carrier
fighter, the F4F Wildcat, wasn’t a match for the Zero, it was true. And the
Americans’ main torpedo plane, the TBD Devastator, was well past its prime.
But the SBD Dauntless had been shown to be a fine dive-bomber, capable of
lugging a heavy bomb load and delivering it with accuracy. Likewise, American
dive-bomber pilots had been proficient enough to score three solid 1,000-lb
bomb hits on Sh kaku, despite her being one of the fastest, toughest carriers in
the fleet. The hapless Sh h had been smashed by as many as eleven bomb hits
and five torpedoes. Taken together, the bloom was distinctly off the rose in
terms of Japanese carriers somehow being immune to damage. Before Coral Sea,
not one had been so much as scratched by the enemy. One look at Sh kaku’s
shattered bow and flight deck should have given Ugaki all the evidence he
needed to begin revising his opinion of the Americans and what it would be like
fighting them.
Yamamoto, however, was in no mood to recast his plans or move the dates
of the operation backward in order to wait for CarDiv 5’s reconstitution. From
all appearances, Sh kaku would be months in the yard.19 However, the landing
operations against Midway required a full moon, which meant that if the troops
were not landed before 8 June, the whole operation would have to be moved
back a month. Furthermore, the weather in the Aleutians was awful most of the
year, and if landings were to be made on Kiska and Attu, they needed to be made
before June was out. In other words, if Operation AL was to be carried out at all,
it needed to occur as Combined Fleet had ordained.20 Yet again, the timetable
for a strictly subordinate operation–in this case in the Aleutians–was helping
drive the primary operational plan.
At the very least, the Japanese might have tried to reconstitute Zuikaku’s air
wing in time to participate in MI. Unfortunately, the organization of Japanese
carrier air groups hampered them in this respect. Unlike American carrier
squadrons, which were independent (and interchangeable) units that shifted from
carrier to carrier at need, Japanese groups were organic to the ship itself. As
such, if either the carrier or the air unit was mauled in the course of combat, both
components were withdrawn until they could be reconstituted. This was an
inherently less flexible organizational arrangement than that of the Americans.21
But if ever there was a need for some enlightened improvisation on the part of
the Japanese, it was now.
If Zuikaku’s air group was to be resurrected for this operation, both aircraft
and pilots would need to be scraped up. But they appeared to be available. When
Zuikaku returned to Kure, she carried her own aircraft as well as refugees from
Sh kaku. These totaled twenty-four Zeros, nine dive-bombers, and six torpedo
planes operable. An additional Zero, eight dive-bombers, and four (later raised to
eight) torpedo planes were believed repairable.22 That gave a maximum of fifty-
six aircraft to work with, which totaled twenty-five Zeros, seventeen dive-
bombers, and fourteen torpedo planes. This was seven aircraft short of Zuikaku’s
nominal establishment of sixty-three but was still roughly equivalent to the totals
being carried by the carriers of CarDiv 1 and 2 at this time. Admittedly, this
force would have been composed of aviators who had not flown together before.
But if there was one thing the Japanese Navy had going for it, it was a
remarkably high degree of tactical homogeneity. Events later in the war were to
show that IJN “pickup” teams could operate together successfully.23 It is hard to
escape the conclusion that Zuikaku could have been made available if her
presence had been considered vital.
However, Yamamoto apparently did not feel any sense of urgency
regarding her. In light of having supposedly sunk two enemy flattops in the
Coral Sea, Japanese intelligence estimates now suggested that the Americans
had only two or three carriers in the Pacific–two of the Yorktown class, and
perhaps the Wasp.24 In addition, it was felt that the Americans might have two or
three “converted carriers,” but they were judged by the Japanese to be unfit for
active duty with the carriers.25 Thus, in the matter of fleet carriers, Nagumo
should have an edge of four to three in the worst case. The consensus among
Combined Fleet’s staff officers was that this seemed good enough.26
 If this was the depth of Combined Fleet’s strategic calculus, it represented a
pretty shallow level of analysis indeed. For one thing, American carrier air
groups were larger than their Japanese counterparts. And while current
intelligence placed only about fifty aircraft on Midway,27 it was also recognized
that the island could be rapidly reinforced with large numbers of aircraft from
Hawaii.28 It was obvious that holding an advantage of a single carrier did not
constitute a reasonable margin of superiority over the possible laundry list of
opponents, even if they were encountered sequentially (as Yamamoto’s designs
intended). Should the unthinkable happen, and Nagumo have to combat both
threats simultaneously, he would be operating at bare parity in aircraft. Zuikaku
could have given him a crucial edge.
And yet on the eve of what Yamamoto conceived as the decisive battle–the
battle that was supposed to determine the fate of the war, and whose cardinal
importance had been ingrained in every Imperial Navy sailor for the last twenty
years–the Japanese were evidently unconcerned enough with the outcome that
working Zuikaku back into the mix wasn’t deemed worth the effort. This stands
in stunning contrast to the Herculean efforts the Americans were shortly to
perform between 27 and 30 May in patching up Yorktown in time for her own
rendezvous with destiny off Midway. In sports parlance, the only conclusion that
can be reached is that the Americans simply “wanted the win” more than their
opponents. The U.S. Navy was willing to adapt to changed circumstances, was
willing to put in the hard work it took to overcome the obstacles to success. The
Japanese were disinclined to go to the same lengths to secure the fruits of
victory. If this was symptomatic of “victory disease”–as some writers have
ascribed the mental complacency and sloppiness in early 1942 that led to Japan’s
forthcoming defeat–then it was a malady that sapped the imagination and
diligence of those afflicted. In contrast to the unstinting efforts that had
characterized earlier Japanese victories, Combined Fleet was sleepwalking into
its most important battle ever.
This same haphazardness was being felt all the way down the line. The
general shape of the battle had been sent to operational commands as part of
Naval GHQ’s Navy Order Number 18 on 5 May. Initial operational orders were
issued on 12 May that began moving units toward their assembly points.29
However, given the tight time frames, the final operational orders for the lower-
level commands were not cut until 20 May.30 Likewise, the fleet was finding it
difficult to distribute the new codebooks needed to support the operation, having
delayed its changeover from JN25-B to the new JN-25V variant from 1 May to
27 May in the scramble.31
 At the same time, several of the needed ships were still undergoing repairs.
Carriers Ry j and Juny , cruisers Takao and Maya, as well as several
destroyers assigned to the northern operations, were all in maintenance. The
same was true of the bulk of 20th, 24th, and 27th destroyer squadrons assigned
to the Midway Invasion Force. Destroyers Ushio, Oboro, and Akebono, which
had just returned from the Coral Sea operation, were shunted north to Ominato
for use in Operation AL. They arrived one day before the Aleutians forces were
scheduled to sortie.32
As a result, preparations and training for battle were skimpy at best. Lower-
level map exercises were hastily convened, but in many cases not all the officers
who were to participate in a given operation were physically present, because
their ships had yet to arrive at their respective marshaling places. Similarly, the
Army’s North Sea Detachment was first organized on 9 May at Asahikawa and
then shipped out less than two weeks later to Ominato. Once there, they and the
Maizuru SNLF troops participated in a single practice-landing exercise on the
25th.33 Overall, the units involved were simply going to have to draw on past
experience to do the best they could in the coming operation.

The final episode in this rather shabby tale of Japanese preparations played itself
out on the very eve of Nagumo’s sailing. In a final conference held on board
Yamato on 25 May, war games again pointed to the possibility of flaws in
Yamamoto’s operational scheme. During this exercise, the Red player promptly
sortied to the west from Oahu and then headed north at high speed. During the
subsequent fray, Japan suffered one carrier sunk and two damaged, while Red
lost both of its carriers. It was pointed out after the exercise that if Red forces
appeared south of the Hawaii/Midway axis, there would be a gap in the air
search pattern for the fleet. It was also noted that coordinating the widely
separated friendly forces would be quite difficult under conditions of strict radio
silence. Some of the officers were of the opinion that the Main Body was
positioned too far from Nagumo’s carriers to be able to provide effective
support. Yamamoto again asked First Air Fleet staff about their ability to repel
an attack should the Americans appear unexpectedly off Midway and was once
again given bland assurances by Nagumo and his subordinates that they were
prepared for such a contingency.34

4-1: Final war games carried out on board Yamato,25 May 1942. In this table
exercise, the American forces exploited an air search gap to the south of Midway
and inflicted heavy losses on the Japanese carrier force. (Source: Senshi S sho,
p. 117.)

During the same exercise, Admiral Nagumo dropped a bombshell–Kid
Butai would not be able to sortie the following morning (26 May) as planned.35
His carriers needed more time for provisioning and other preparations.36
Nagumo asked that the timetable for the entire operation be pushed back a day.
Other lower-level commands, under strain to get their units prepared in time to
sortie, supported his request. They also wanted the ability to change some of the
assembly points for their forces, because there had been problems supplying all
the ships with necessary oil.37
Yamamoto demurred. If Nagumo couldn’t sail, so be it. But the operational
imperatives remained the same. The tides around Midway weren’t going to
accommodate Nagumo’s tardiness or that of the other units–the landings had to
take place as scheduled. Nagumo would simply have one less day to knock the
island out. In so doing, Yamamoto explicitly acknowledged that Nagumo’s new
timetable meant that Tanaka’s invasion convoy and its covering forces would in
essence be a day ahead of where they were supposed to be relative to Kid
Butai. As such, they would be exposed to detection and attack before Nagumo
could deal with the threat from the island. However, this was a calculated risk
that Yamamoto was prepared to take.38
The incredible part of this episode is not so much that Nagumo couldn’t sail
on time, although that was bad enough. Rather, it was the fact that no shred of
the operational plan was adjusted to accommodate the new sortie date.
Yamamoto may well have been right that the overall timetable was essentially
driven by tidal forces and that the schedule for invasion was therefore
immutable. But at the very least some contingency plans, even of a verbal sort,
ought to have been put in place to deal with the likelihood that Tanaka and
Kurita’s invasion forces would be detected prematurely by the Americans. Yet
nothing of the sort apparently occurred. Neither Nagumo nor Yamamoto could
have left the 25 May conference in good temper.
All in all, as one Japanese naval officer later remarked, “for a naval force
which was the protagonist in the most ambitious plan of the Imperial General
Headquarter in the war, this was a precarious situation.”39 At the end of nearly
three months of top-level bickering, the fleet was shortly to head out on a
mission whose goals were questionable at best. The operational plan was
impossibly complex, its disposition of forces mutually nonsupporting, and its
timetable overly rigid. Compounding these basic operational problems were
errors in execution as well. Any staff officer worth his salt could tell that
Operation MI hadn’t been war-gamed properly, and there had been too little time
for training. The plan hadn’t been revised to accommodate the unexpected
absence of two crucial flight decks, nor in light of the other developments in the
Coral Sea. Nagumo’s late departure, coupled with yet another wholly predictable
failure to revise the positions of the invasion units or the operation timetable, had
been the icing on the cake. Chihaya Masatake perhaps summarized these
multiple failures most succinctly when he wrote later of Combined Fleet, “It
could not be said of them, ‘Everything was done that was humanly possible.’ ”40
It was under this cloud of ill fortune that Kid Butai sailed to meet its fate two
days later.
5

Transit

After exiting the Inland Sea on the afternoon of 27 May, Nagumo’s force
proceeded through the night on a southeasterly heading. They woke to a brilliant
sun rising over the bows of the ships. Now swinging due east, they cruised along
at fourteen knots. The men, as usual, rose at sunrise, with breakfast being served
about an hour thereafter. The crews then got down to business– cleaning the
ship, tending the machinery, and participating in combat drills. For all the men,
though, there were ample opportunities for recreation. Indeed, steaming to battle
often afforded more such occasions than their normal peacetime routine did.1
The pilots amused themselves by playing card games or sh gi (Japanese chess),
loafing in the ready room, or sunning themselves on the flight deck near the
island. Others read the popular novels that passed around endlessly through the
ranks or played musical instruments. Some of the men had learned from their
experience in the South Pacific to bring folding wooden chairs with them, so that
they could recline at their ease on the decks.
Every afternoon after lunch, the crews were assembled on deck to exercise
and sing martial songs. This was designed to keep morale up and imbue the men
with fighting spirit. Some of the officers, however, let the men mix up the
musical fare with more popular and less militaristic numbers from back home–it
was important to get the younger sailors’ buy in on such matters to get their full
participation.2
Conditions on the ships quickly became somewhat squalid. Fresh water was
limited, particularly on longer cruises. The destroyers, whose tankage space was
much more limited, suffered more in this regard. As a result, bathing was held to
a minimum. This was a deprivation; the evening bath is a Japanese ritual. Since
showers were unknown in their warships, the men were limited to washing their
hands and faces before meals.3 As a result, the crew had to ventilate the ship to
ensure that the air did not become foul. This was done throughout the day, with
the men opening groups of portholes (even during battle-steaming conditions)
under the supervision of the officers.
 On a war mission, the cooks made special efforts to ensure that the men
were given tasty rations. The crews were indulged with fresh fruit and delicacies
such as ohagi (sugar and red bean rice cake) and shiruko (red bean soup with
rice cake in it).4 Overall, the mood in the rank and file appeared relaxed, as if
they were simply on a pleasure cruise. However, overnight on the 27th–28th at
least one bad omen had befallen the task force. Commander Fuchida Mitsuo, the
leader of Akagi’s air group, had fallen ill. Already feeling under the weather at
the time of the force’s departure, he had doubled over during the evening. He
was diagnosed with acute appendicitis. Fuchida pleaded in vain to postpone the
inevitable, but Akagi’s surgeon overruled him and operated immediately.5 For
the air groups, this was disheartening. Fuchida was a popular commander, and
the men would miss having the Pearl Harbor attack leader in their ranks during
the battle.

5-1: Commander Fuchida Mitsuo, Akagi air group hik taich , leader of the Pearl
Harbor strike force, and subsequent author of a prominent book on Midway.
(Photo courtesy Michael Wenger)

John Keegan, in his book The Face of Battle, noted that battle is neither “
‘strategic,’ nor ‘tactical,’ nor material, nor technical.” Rather, what battles have
in common “is human: the behavior of men struggling to reconcile their instinct
for self-preservation, their sense of honour and the achievement of some aim
over which other men are ready to kill them.” The study of battle is therefore
“necessarily a social and psychological study.” More important, though, “Battles
belong to finite moments in history, to the societies which raise the armies which
fight them, to the economies and technologies which these societies sustain.”6
Keegan’s words pertain precisely to the study of naval combat as well.
Indeed, they are perhaps even more pertinent in a nautical setting, for the study
of naval warfare (more than any other form of combat) holds the potential to
completely subordinate the human element to the weapons themselves. Naval
combat is conducted almost exclusively by means of machines–machines that
are in many cases so huge and grand that they often seem to take on a life and
personality of their own that transcend the tiny figures that inhabit them. Yet, in
the final analysis, it is men who live in the ship, command and fight the ship, and
often die in the ship. Their story, no matter how seemingly eclipsed by the great
vessels they serve in, is still the fundamental story to be related.
Any study of the First Mobile Striking Force, no matter how technically
grounded, to some degree must also be a study of the Japanese Navy in a social
sense. The Battle of Midway was fought by Japanese men, who were the
products of an intensely disciplined, patriarchal, militarized, and above all,
Eastern society. Understanding the battle without comprehending their
emotional and cultural outlook is pointless. Of course, any Occidental portrayal
of an Oriental society, especially at the space of several decades remove is (to
say the least) fraught with peril. Yet despite this, it is necessary to draw together
an honest picture of the Japanese that is comprehensible to a Western reader.
Who, then, were the men of Kid Butai?
The first thing that must be recalled pertains not only to the Japanese
psyche, but that of Asia as a whole. It is simply this–that for more than a century
preceding the Pacific war, to be born almost anywhere in Asia was to be born the
chattel, either explicit or implied, of a white colonial government. Colonial
interests directed every facet of economic and political life in Asia. Asians were
not allowed to choose their own governments, their affairs being presided over
by administrations whose rule ran the gamut from largely benign to hideously
inept and downright cruel. The colonies’ economic raison d’être was to feed
low-priced raw materials and local trinkets to their masters and consume
manufactured goods in return, often at disadvantageous financial terms. As part
of this general subjugation, Asians were almost universally regarded as moral,
intellectual, and social inferiors by whites.
Only in Japan did these general conditions of servility not pertain. And the
only reason the Japanese had not shouldered their own yoke was that they had
armed themselves to the teeth with modern weaponry. This process had begun in
1853 with the descent of Admiral Matthew Perry’s jet-black warships on the
Japanese coast, thereby “opening” Japan to the West (an event characterized
more in terms of rape by those who had been “opened”). This traumatic and
unwilling entrance onto the stage of world politics had triggered the social
tumult of the Meiji Restoration, which had led to the establishment of a new
national government in 1868.
 Thereafter, the Japanese had, by a combination of cunning policy, ruthless
implementation of a national industrialization plan, and frantic effort and
sacrifice on the part of the populace, begun transforming their nation into a
modern industrial state. Within forty years, Japan was a major regional player;
within forty more she was a world power. The breathtaking scope of this
accomplishment had impressed the Japanese as being proof of their own moral
superiority. Simultaneously, it had reinforced the inescapable social message
that national security was the product of unstinting labor, limited internal
dissent, and a plenitude of modern military hardware.
Along the way, of course, it had been necessary for Japan to visibly
demonstrate that it would not be pushed around by the colonial powers. The
object of this exercise had been Czarist Russia, which the Japanese had shrewdly
assessed as being the most proximate, least militarily capable, and most
domestically unstable of its potential opponents. The stunning Japanese military
successes achieved during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, including the
annihilation of a large Russian fleet during the Battle of Tsushima, had served
notice that an Asian power had arisen that was not to be trifled with. At the same
time, though, Tsushima planted the seeds for Japan’s defeat in World War II by
creating a warped perception within the Japanese Navy regarding the importance
of winning decisive battles. In the prescient words of Chihaya Masatake,
“Dazzled by … brilliant victories, [the Japanese Navy] concluded erroneously
that victory was brought about solely by the single stroke of a decisive
engagement.” Chihaya labeled this “a blind belief that spelled disaster.”7
That disaster, however, lay thirty-seven years in the future. The immediate
importance of Tsushima in a geopolitical sense was both positive and
undeniable. While the colonial powers had occasionally suffered local and
largely temporary reverses at the hands of “the natives” on land, no white nation
had ever had its navy beaten by an indigenous force. Particularly since the
advent of steam power, the idea was simply unthinkable. For the Japanese to
have then followed this achievement by forcing Russia to sue for peace after
defeating its army in the field put the capstone on a shocking war. The fact that
the conflict had, in fact, nearly bankrupted Japan, and had exposed to the
perceptive observer the still-fragile infrastructure of Japanese industrial power,
was overshadowed by the dramatic changes in the regional security picture that
resulted from her victories. From this moment, the Japanese had a sense of
having arrived on the world stage and believed (with some justification) that the
white nations should accord them the same respect they accorded one another.
That they did not, rankled Japan greatly.
This frustration was compounded by a deeply held belief on the part of the
Japanese that they were part of a unique, and uniquely superior ethnic group.
The Japanese were certainly not alone in the early part of the century in
considering their own race better than the next, but the Japanese version of this
social ill was perhaps more clannish than most. The Japanese harbored the belief
that their society was possessed of an unusual cultural homogeneity. Perhaps this
notion was driven by their exceptional racial uniformity and homogeneity–even
today, Japan’s population is still 99 percent native Japanese. Whatever the
reason, to the Japanese, being Japanese meant a lot more than simply living in
one country with people that looked the same. It meant being a part of a group
that shared a common culture, a set of mutual beliefs, a uniform heritage and
language, and supposedly a common outlook on life.
Venture much farther down the path of what it truly means to be Japanese,
and the line between rational and semimystical inevitably begins to blur. The
Japanese people, it was said, were all one race, embodied in the person of the
emperor. The emperor himself was held to be divine, a direct descendent of the
semimythical First Emperor Jimmu who had reigned around 600 BC, and who
was in turn supposedly a descendent of the Sun Goddess Ameterasu herself.
With such an impeccable pedigree, who could doubt that this one true race–the
“Yamato race,” imbued with the “true Japanese spirit”–was a people of destiny?
To a Westerner, particularly Americans raised in a nation where diversity,
fractiousness, and individuality are a part of the basic social fabric, such flowery
notions of a “true” Japanese race are preposterous at best, downright dangerous
at worst. Yet it must also be recalled that Japan was not alone at this time in
harboring ethnocentric outlooks, many of which were a good deal less poetic in
nature.
During the decades leading up to the war, this belief in Japanese racial
unity, of being a part of a divinely purposed people, had been reinforced by the
rhetoric of nationalism until it had become the central pillar around which the
tent of Japanese militarism was pitched. To this mix were added legitimate and
reinforcing grievances against the racism and asymmetrical economic advantage
that Western colonialism had created throughout Asia. What emerged was a
twisted pseudonationalist mythos that promised only ill for Asia and ultimately
the Japanese themselves. By divine right, Japan would be the instrument that
lifted the hated yoke of white oppression from all of Asia. The Asian peoples
would naturally come under the aegis of Japanese society. It was a heady
mission indeed. “One hundred million hearts advancing as one!” was a common
exhortation of Japanese wartime propaganda, and it roughly fit the image that
the militarists wanted to project to the public and the world–that of a dynamic
race fulfilling its noble destiny with a single, almost telepathically felt purpose.
 The militarists’ concept of “liberation” ultimately proved to be little more
than the bodily shoving aside of the white powers so that the Japanese might
themselves swill at the trough of economic exploitation. However, that
apparently did not sully the underlying purity of this grand vision in their eyes.
Neither did Japanese resentment of racist inequality from the West stop it from
foisting an equally virulent form of oppression on its own Asian neighbors. To
all the internal contradictions of their Pan-Asian mission the Japanese turned a
blind eye. Wrapped in the cloak of heaven-sent purpose, Japan had ultimately
moved, perhaps inevitably, first from border fracases and provocations into a
state of “Special Undeclared War” in China as the 1930s wore on.
To the average Westerner, steeped in the winner’s history of World War II,
any attempt to justify Japan’s war in terms of Pan-Asian liberation is simply so
much hogwash. The Japanese were aggressors, the Allies liberators, and
everything from a moral standpoint has been very much cut and dried for half a
century. The prevailing American attitude toward the war was crystallized as
soon as the first Japanese bomb fell on Pearl Harbor. Yamamoto’s “sneak”
attack simply put an exclamation point on the writ of contemporary American
moral outrage over previous Japanese aggressions in Asia.
Yet, despite the fundamental validity of these Western views, it is important
to recall that at some level the Japanese people sincerely believed they were
fighting for a larger cause, whose intrinsic good was undeniable. If they were
also capable of ignoring the social injustices and outright atrocities–which were
many and sordid– that accrued under this banner, then that sublimation came
about from a conviction that achieving the larger goal of destroying Western
colonialism somehow justified the means employed. This long-standing
rationalization lies at the core of Japan’s inability to examine and condemn its
own wartime actions with anything approaching the sincerity and candor that its
victims feel is required.
Given the transparent nature of the seemingly lofty ideals accompanying
the creation of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, it is ironic that
Japan’s destruction of the existing colonial system was perhaps the only goal
Japan actually attained during her ruinous war. Whatever the conflict’s ultimate
outcome, the humiliating defeats inflicted on the Dutch and British during 1941–
42 irrevocably destroyed their ruling legitimacy. Within a decade of the end of
hostilities, white colonialism would be all but banished from Asia. Of course, it
is doubly ironic that this goal was accomplished in a manner that none of Japan’s
military leaders would have appreciated. Indeed, instead of lording over all of
Asia, Japan herself was burned down to cinders for inflicting “liberation” on her
neighbors.
 Toward America the Japanese reserved a very particular animus, one based
on a long history of Yankee mistreatment that was hardly imagined. From
blatantly unfair immigration quotas on the West Coast, second-class treatment of
Japanese émigrés, and the economic and social repression of the very sizable
Japanese population on Hawaii, the Japanese could point to a long list of
grievances against their powerful Pacific neighbor.
To this general list the Japanese Navy added a complaint of their own–a
long resentment against what they felt were unfair and insulting provisions in the
naval treaties that governed all the world’s major navies during the 1920s and
1930s. The Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, and its successor the London
Naval Treaty of 1930, had established caps on major categories of warships. In
each case, the Japanese received a lesser tonnage quota than either the Royal
Navy or U.S. Navy. The treaties were a slap in the face of the Imperial Navy’s
self-perception as a world-class force. Worse yet, they placed Japanese quotas of
warships at a level that conventional naval strategy of the time pegged as being
insufficient for the defense of the Home Islands.
In reality, of course, by signing these treaties, the Japanese were able to
avoid an impending arms race against America, which, with their much less
developed economy, they could not have hoped to win. The act of placing an
artificially low ceiling on America’s enormous industrial capacity was a far
more effective defense than attempting to match American output. The treaties
thus protected Japan against American aggression better than the imperial
military could have done on its own.
These brutal economic realities were readily apparent to the more
perceptive thinkers within the Imperial Navy. Admiral Yamamoto had been a
delegation member to the Washington Naval Treaty negotiations and shared the
vision of the chief of the naval delegation, Admiral Kato Tomosaburo. Kato
argued that Japan’s security vis-ô-vis the Americans necessarily rested on
diplomacy, at least for the foreseeable future. However, the so-called Fleet
Faction was violently opposed to the treaties (and those who supported them).
Eventually, the heat of nationalist fervor overcame the cold logic of economics,
and Japan announced that it would withdraw from the London Treaty in 1937.
Unpopular naval treaties could be renounced with relative ease; the grim
truth of the economic gap that existed between Japan and her potential American
opponent could not be dispelled so simply. On one side of the Pacific lay Japan,
an island nation with few natural resources. She was completely dependent on
the trade of other nations to supply her factories with raw materials and her
military with oil. On the other side lay the United States–enormous and self-
sufficient in practically everything she needed. Even when mired in the midst of
the Great Depression, the United States still possessed an economy that was
some seven times larger than Japan’s. The inherent and largely intractable
“unfairness” of this situation (in Japan’s eyes) inevitably placed the empire in an
inferior bargaining position. America knew she was in a position to dictate;
Japan was expected to listen. The seeds of the coming war lay in America’s
misreading of Japan’s long-term willingness to be dictated to, coupled with
Japan’s own inability to completely recognize the implications of these
military/economic realities should she decide to go to war against her powerful
opponent.
When the United States began applying economic pressure to first curtail
and then roll back the empire’s gains in China, the emotional concoction that had
been brewing for decades finally came to a boil. With the Japanese occupation of
Vichy French Indochina, America had reacted by imposing a total embargo on
oil in July 1941. Piled on top of previous curtailments of iron ore, scrap metal,
and strategic minerals, the West was using every economic weapon at its
disposal to bring the empire to its knees. Japan seethed; to finally strike back,
even if doing so meant a ruinous war, was the wish of the entire country.8
What was even more remarkable was that this emotional fervor was
generated in a country that was already heartily sick of its war in China. The
public perceived (correctly) that the war against the Chinese tar baby was
stalemated and could not be brought to a successful resolution. The Japanese
public felt powerless and detached from their own domestic politics, viewing the
machinations of the Army and Navy, the assassinations of government officials
by members of the armed forces, and the other unsavory political acts of their
own military with a jaundiced eye. That the prospect of fighting an additional
war against the most powerful economy on earth, with the British and Dutch
Empires thrown in for good measure, could bring a sense of elation to the
Japanese public demonstrates the depth of its resentment against white
imperialism in general, and America in particular. It also illustrates the extent to
which nationalist fervor had apparently detached the nation’s leadership from
any ability to engage in a cool, reasoned appraisal of the likely nature and
outcome of such a gargantuan conflict.9
The military culture of the Imperial Navy was the natural result of these
powerful and sometimes contradictory societal reactants. Its men were, above all
things, intensely motivated to succeed. Duty–duty to one’s country and one’s
family–looms large in the Japanese consciousness, and the Imperial Navy’s fleet
raised this ethos to standards few navies have seen. Perhaps the first thing that an
American sailor might have noticed upon strolling about a Japanese man-of-war
would have been the seriousness with which the average sailor performed even
the least of his shipboard affairs. The Japanese are notable for their earnestness,
which to many Westerners comes across as almost mawkish, and perhaps even
contrived. Contrived it most certainly is not–Japanese society places a premium
on conformity, discipline, and a deeply felt need to fulfill one’s obligations.
Failure to act correctly in the eyes of society results in shame, and shame is to be
avoided like the plague, as it attaches itself not only to the individual, but also to
one’s family, friends, neighbors, and ultimately even the emperor and the entire
Japanese people. When used as the basis for indoctrination in the self-referential
confines of a military institution, the result was a group of fighting men who
feared the shame of ignoble failure more than death itself.
Another thing an American would have quickly noticed was the harsh
discipline meted out to the enlisted men. To strike a man was nothing; it
happened all the time in response to even the most trivial infractions. In the
words of one veteran, the Navy appeared to “put almost superstitious faith in the
belief that brutality and physical punishment made better sailors.”10 As part of
that iron discipline, every Japanese military man was expected to conform
instantly to orders. Naval pilot Sakai Saburo, who entered the Navy as a seaman
recruit, remarked that his petty officers in training were “absolute tyrants” and
“sadistic brutes of the worst sort.” While his training as a recruit had been brutal
enough, shipboard life was, if possible, even more violent. The effect, in Sakai’s
words, was to reduce the men to “human cattle,” who never “dared to question
orders, to doubt authority, to do anything but immediately carry out all the
commands of our superiors.”11
Yet insubordination was not at all unknown within the military, though
curiously it often manifested itself in the officer corps. Junior officers in both the
Army and Navy had a reputation for violence, even against their superiors.
Ultraright junior officers had assassinated several prominent political figures–
including Japan’s prime minister during a brief mutiny in February 1936–for
trying to curtail the military’s budgets and activities. In like fashion, a group of
relatively junior Army staff officers, led by the infamous Lt. Col. Ishiwara Kanji,
had fomented the Mukden Incident of September 1931. This became the pretext
for Japan’s invasion and consolidation of Manchuria. In 1937 junior staff
officers of the Kwantung Army essentially started the current conflict against
China on their own initiative, betting correctly that their superiors in Tokyo
would be reluctant to rein them in and thereby lose face.
Likewise, while the Navy liked to think of itself as the more educated and
world-wise of Japan’s two services, violence was hardly unknown even within
the ranks of its flag officers. When the planning for Pearl Harbor had been in full
swing, Admiral Yamaguchi had learned of a version of the attack plan that
scratched his CarDiv 2 from the operation. Accounts of the ensuing incident
vary, but all agree that a highly intoxicated Yamaguchi essentially assaulted
Nagumo, placing him in a Judo headlock and demanding that he relent and
include S ry and Hiry in the operation.12 Kusaka apparently intervened and
separated the two. For his part, a similarly intoxicated Nagumo had threatened to
knife Admiral Inoue at a garden party being held by no less personage than
Prince Fushimi, the emperor’s uncle.13 Many saw Yamamoto’s appointment as
head of the Combined Fleet as an effort to remove him from the very real threat
of assassination in the politically charged snake pit of Tokyo. Yamamoto, like
Inoue, opposed the powerful Fleet Faction, and it was felt that he would be safer
in Hashirajima. Thus, despite the rigid discipline inherent in the service, violent
outbursts (often abetted by alcohol) were apparently within the norms of
acceptable behavior.
This, then, was the character of the Navy that fought at Midway–a military
force perhaps more definable by its contrasts than anything else. It was an
organization that was both ferocious and sentimental, where extreme loyalty and
discipline were matched by an equal aptitude for brutal behavior toward the rank
and file, and a callous disregard for the lives of its men. As events were about to
prove, it had put in the hard work necessary to be technically and tactically
astute. But it had not matched those efforts with the mental exertion needed to
operate at the higher strategic levels required by a global war.

At 1430 on the 28th, Nagumo’s force sighted ships on the horizon. This was Kid
Butai’s supply unit, consisting of the oilers Kyokut Maru, Shinkoku Maru, T
h Maru, Nippon Maru, and Kokuy Maru. They were escorted by destroyer
Akigumo. As soon as these ships integrated themselves into the formation,
Nagumo ordered a course change to the east-northeast. Things began to settle
into a routine. Cruising speed was maintained at fourteen knots, in consideration
of the fuel needs of the force’s escorts, as well as the somewhat slower speed of
the oilers.14 Destroyers were notorious fuel hogs, and when conducting high-
speed operations, their consumption rates could jump by a factor of ten or more.
Therefore, all commanders took pains to ensure that their escorts were topped
off as close to the battle site as possible. Each ship refueled at least twice en
route.15 The destroyers did so almost every day. The Japanese Navy wasn’t as
proficient in underway replenishment as the U.S. Navy was, and, as a result,
their refueling operations were slower and more cumbersome. Larger ships used
the less-efficient astern refueling method, wherein a six-inch hose was passed aft
to a warship trailing the oiler. Destroyers sometimes did so as well, but more
often they refueled side by side with the tanker.16 These evolutions went on
almost continuously as the fleet headed east.
Each day during the transit, one of the four carriers was designated the duty
ship for the force.17 S ry had the first watch on the 27th. As such, she was
responsible for keeping a small combat air patrol contingent above the fleet at all
times during daylight hours. In addition, the duty carrier worked with the
cruisers and battleships to maintain antisubmarine patrols. ASW watches usually
amounted to no more than two Type 99 bombers at any time. The duty carrier
typically kept a small number of aircraft (either fighters or Type 99s) on the
flight deck and warmed up during these hours. Patrols lasted two hours, although
the Zeros could stay aloft much longer than this if need be.18 Being the duty
carrier meant a constant hum of low intensity flight operations continuing
throughout the day, with remunitioning and refueling taking place in the hangars
constantly. On the “off-duty” carriers, the crews devoted themselves to routine
maintenance and training.
At this point in the war, the Japanese Navy relied on three types of carrier
aircraft. The first was the famous Mitsubishi Type 0 (A6M2) carrier fighter (in
Japanese, kanjo sentoki, often referred to by its abbreviated form kansen, or
“fighter”). A small, highly streamlined airplane, the Zero had first won renown
over the skies of China and then during the opening campaigns of the Pacific
war. It was the epitome of the Japanese Navy’s offensive spirit, combining
extraordinary maneuverability and good firepower delivered by two 7.7-mm
machine guns in the front cowling, and two 20-mm cannons in the wings.
Optimized for low-to mid-altitude aerobatics, the Zero was perfect for
dogfighting and complimented the samurai-like temperaments of its owners
splendidly. In the hands of an expert pilot, it could fly rings around any Allied
fighter.
The Zero was built around the Sakae-12 radial engine, which developed
950 horsepower at takeoff. Though not a particularly powerful engine by
contemporary standards, it benefited from the Zero’s lightweight construction
and provided the plane with good wing loading and climb rate. When fitted with
a drop tank, which the Japanese used routinely, it was also an extraordinarily
long-ranged fighter, capable of operating as much as 300 miles from the carrier.
However, it was also lightly built, almost totally unarmored, and did not possess
self-sealing fuel tanks. It was, in short, a very easy machine to be killed in if the
enemy managed to get a good shot, as the pilot was exposed to gunfire and
vulnerable to fires and explosions as well. Thus far, however, the Allied fighters
hadn’t been able to get the measure of the Zero in combat.

5-2: Routes taken to the battlefield by the various formations of the Imperial
Navy. Movements of the U.S. Navy are also shown.

The Navy’s dive-bomber was the large Aichi Type 99 (D3A1) carrier
bomber (in Japanese, kanj bakugekiki, referred to by its abbreviated form
kanbaku). These powerful aircraft were notable for their spatted landing gear and
graceful, elliptical wings. A two-seat plane (pilot and radio operator/rear
gunner), they were ruggedly constructed to survive the rigors of screaming down
at steep angles and high speeds. Their armament was either a 250-kg (550-lb)
armor-piercing bomb, or a 242-kg (532-lb) high-explosive weapon. The
Japanese had already demonstrated that their pilots were some of the best in the
world, capable of hitting fast-moving warships routinely. If the Type 99 had one
drawback, it was the weight of its payload–its opposite number in the U.S. Navy,
the SBD Dauntless, was capable of carrying a 1,000-lb bomb. Still, the Type 99
had proven itself a worthy airplane in all theaters of combat and was rightly to
be feared for its accuracy.
The third major plane in the Navy’s carrier inventory was the Nakajima
Type 97 (B5N2) carrier attack aircraft (kanjo kogekiki, or just Kank for short.)
The Type 97 was a dual-role aircraft and could perform both level bombing as
well as torpedo attacks. In the first role, it could be armed with up to 800 kg
(1,760 lb.) of bombs. In its antishipping role, it was armed with a Type 91
torpedo instead. Manned by three crewmen (pilot, observer/bombardier, radio
operator/tail gunner) the Type 97 was a solid performer. It was markedly
superior to its counterparts in the U.S. Navy in terms of speed, as well as the
altitude and speed at which it could release its torpedo.19 This last advantage was
more the function of the ordnance than the plane, as the Japanese Type 91
torpedo was a much more reliable and robust weapon than its American
equivalent.
In addition to these three proven mainstays, Operation MI would also
witness the debut of a new carrier aircraft. S ry had on board her at least one,
and likely two, prototypes of the much-anticipated successor to the Type 99
dive-bomber, the Yokosuka D4Y1 Suisei (“Comet”). These preproduction
models had been modified for reconnaissance work, because they had good
range and high cruising speed.20 Having been worked up by two of S ry ’s
Type 99 crews, they were now along in place of two of the eighteen kanbaku
normally carried by the carrier.21 They would be used in a scouting role if
necessary.
The basic tactical building block of every aircraft formation was the three-
plane shotai. Led by a shotaicho, the shotai was roughly equivalent to a section
or element in a Western air force.22 A shotai typically flew in an inverted “V”
pattern, with the lead aircraft slightly below the two trailing aircraft. The
formation was looser than the old-style British three-plane “Vic,” and somewhat
more flexible. The Japanese had not yet picked up on the more useful four-plane
formations that now dominated aerial tactics in the European theater and that had
already been copied by the Americans.
A group of two or three shotai composed a ch tai (equivalent to a division).
At the beginning of the Pacific war, all carrier aircraft used a nine-plane ch tai
organization. However, around March 1942, the Kank groups had begun
shifting over to six-plane chutai, most likely because it provided more flexible
target selection capabilities for the squadron as whole.23 Dive-bombers,
however, still used nine-plane ch tai at Midway, as did the fighters. In the case
of fighters, the ch tai formation was not really used tactically, the Zero pilots
reverting to the three-plane sh tai formation during the heat of combat.
Bombers, though, tended to maneuver and attack by ch tai. The leader of the ch
tai was typically a lieutenant, designated the buntaich .

5-3: Basic air organizations used by the Imperial Navy in 1942.

The entire ship’s establishment of a given type of aircraft was typically
composed of two or three chutai. Each squadron was designated according to the
type of plane composing it. Thus a kanjo kogekikitai was a torpedo bomber
squadron, whereas a carrier’s Zero unit was the kanjo sentokitai, and so on. The
squadron was led by the senior buntaicho among the two or more buntaicho that
served in it. When operating with another carrier’s matching kitai, the senior
buntaicho among the two groups would lead the composite unit. The
combination of all three of an individual carrier’s squadrons resulted in the hik
kitai, or carrier air group. Commanded by either a lieutenant commander or
commander (known as the hik taich ), the hik kitai was referred to by the
ship’s name, for example, Akagi hikokitai.
However, unlike the U.S. Navy, which at this point in the war did not
actively employ a tactical organization higher than the individual carrier air
group, during the China war the Japanese had taken the concept of massing
airpower one step further by combining the air establishments of a carrier
division (K k Sentai) into a virtual combat organization of its own. To the
Japanese, the carrier division, not the individual carrier, was the fundamental
operational grouping, and naval air doctrine was centered on combined strikes
using these groups. Dai-ichi Kid Butai had been employing this practice since
the beginning of the war, wielding a minimum of two and often three carrier
divisions.

Having discussed Japanese aircraft and air unit organization, it is necessary to

turn to a brief discussion of Japanese carrier doctrine and organization. Most
readers of military history don’t understand doctrine and don’t want to, because
it has no place in the tales of individual soldiers or great military leaders that
they are used to. Indeed, doctrine is often seen as an unnecessary encumbrance
that loses battles and gets in the way of exercising creative command. This is
ironic, in that one of the prevalent goals behind doctrine is the simplification and
streamlining of command, precisely so that commanders can fashion appropriate
solutions during battle.24
Much of this disinterest in doctrine, particularly in the United States, stems
from two factors. The first probably has much to do with the American
temperament, which has always placed a premium on allowing talented
individuals the freedom to “do things their own way.” American civilian culture
emphasizes individuality and the ability to improvise successfully under
challenging circumstances. Along with this comes a unique American mistrust
of dogma of any kind–religious, political, or cultural–on top of which is
sprinkled a profound societal suspicion of overly professional militaries. Not
only that, but doctrine itself is just impossibly dull for the average reader (and
isn’t noticeably livelier for the professional, for that matter). It is not surprising,
therefore, that works on military doctrine have hardly been best sellers in the
United States.
The other factor is that few devotees of military history actually know
precisely what doctrine is or understand its purpose in battle. Doctrine is just,
“Procedures you’ve got to follow.” Yet, while it is true that doctrine does
contain a mandatory element, this does not satisfactorily answer why militaries
have doctrine. It also must be admitted that the basic criticism of amateurs–that
doctrine atrophies the ability of commanders to reason critically–contains a
kernel of truth. Doctrine does have a potential downside, in that it can stifle
creativity if it is applied in an unthinking manner.
At its simplest, doctrine is the body of formal knowledge that tells a
fighting force how it is expected to fight. Strictly speaking, doctrine is bigger
than tactics, in that doctrine encompasses not only the means for actually
handling forces in battle, but also augments it with a command structure and
communications procedures that ensure that its directives are carried out. Wayne
Hughes, whose book on naval tactics is probably the best modern offering in the
field, describes doctrine as the intellectual glue that holds tactics together. It is
more than what is written in the manual; it is the corpus of “guiding principles
that warriors believe in and act on.”25
The development of doctrine is the natural imperative of any military trying
to rise above the level of being merely an armed mob. It is an essential means by
which militaries compensate for the negatives of warfare by building a certain
measure of automatic behavior into the organization. Indeed, in the terrible
crucible of combat, under the enormous pressures created by mass violence,
doctrine is sometimes the only thing that holds forces together and allows them
to continue fighting. By setting out a coherent set of tactical goals, units can
continue to operate even if the chain of command is disrupted or destroyed.
From the perspective of command, doctrine pays dividends in that it allows
the commander to focus on “The Big Picture.” Leaders can be secure in the
knowledge that their forces will, to a certain extent, be able to “think” for
themselves and thereby behave with some manner of predictability. The ability
to impose any sort of predictability on the chaos of warfare is a commodity to be
treasured. It is for this reason that militaries pour huge amounts of time and
money into creating combat doctrine and training their forces to follow it. The
Japanese were certainly no different from their foreign contemporaries in this
respect.
Why does this matter to a study of the Battle of Midway? Because without
understanding a Navy’s doctrine, how and why it fights the way it does cannot
truly be understood. Indeed, a great many retrospective questions along the lines
of, “Why didn’t Admiral So-and-So just do such and such?” can often be
answered, “Because it wasn’t part of their doctrine.” Going against doctrine is
almost always a dicey proposition within a military culture. Doctrinal
innovators, even if they win the battle, will still be riddled with second-guessing
regarding their approach, as if the victory were somehow tainted by heterodoxy.
Worse yet awaits the commander who violates doctrine and loses.
Unfortunately, for the past sixty years, almost every Western historian who
has written on the Battle of Midway has made the assumption that Japanese
carriers and naval aviation forces behaved pretty much like their Western
counterparts. In fact, in many respects they did not. The reasons the Japanese
operated differently stemmed from a host of factors–starting with cultural and
strategic imperatives, but also including technology and warship design. A
grounding in Japanese doctrine is therefore a prerequisite for evaluating the
performance of Nagumo’s force during the battle. Fortunately, these principles,
although poorly understood in the West until recently, are relatively simple to
relate.
The fundamental principle that informed all Japanese doctrine was the need
to offset the advantages of the United States, an opponent whose industrial base
was incomparably stronger than Japan’s and whose Navy was mandated by the
Washington and London Naval treaties to be more powerful. The Japanese were
thus caught in the intellectual vise of trying to devise the means to fight the
Americans on a geopolitical landscape that guaranteed them fewer military
assets at the outset and no hope of procuring long-term economic superiority.
The result of these pressures were manifold and affected everything from the
formulation of national strategy down to the level of tactics and equipment.
In terms of Japanese naval doctrine, there were two chief effects. First, the
overriding need to compensate for numerical inferiority resulted in a tactical
doctrine that elevated the principle of using coordinated, massed firepower to the
status of divine law. Likewise, striking first, at longer range and with more
powerful weaponry, was seen as the only possible antidote to American
numerical preponderance. This was a rather archetypal “quality versus quantity”
response, and the Japanese pursued this goal with a single-mindedness that
would have been laudable had it not been so narrow-minded.
Before the war, it was presumed that the likely venue of Japan’s superior
firepower would be a decisive battle fought in the Western Pacific. Here, the
Japanese would draw the American battle line to its eventual doom, relying first
on coordinated night torpedo attacks delivered from cruisers and destroyers to
whittle the American force down to size. Once the American battle line had been
damaged and disorganized, a more conventional surface battle would be joined.
In that culminating fight, devastating long-range gunfire from the Japanese battle
line would complete the victory. It was for this battle that the Japanese Navy
trained, to the exclusion of almost all else. As is often the case, though,
overemphasis on one mission was detrimental to the balance of the force as a
whole, as well as its thinking processes. Put simply, Japanese doctrine was
warped. It placed an unrealistic emphasis on one type of battle and largely
ignored the other traditional missions of great navies–sea control, amphibious
power projection, and the protection of the nation’s seaborne commerce. The
result was that by the late 1930s, Japanese tactical doctrine was an almost
Baroque ode to the principle of the offensive. And while it contained many
elements that would serve the Japanese well during the first part of the Pacific
war (superior night-fighting capabilities being a notable example), it was not an
honest intellectual basis on which to build a successful war-fighting approach.26
The second major manifestation of the pressures placed on the Japanese
Navy was to be found in its weapons systems. In a certain sense, warships and
aircraft can be viewed as physical manifestations of doctrine. This only makes
sense–weapons systems should be designed to operate in the fashion in which a
navy as a whole intends to fight. Budgetary pressure and politics being what they
are, most designs are usually modified away from the purely doctrinal
requirements that spawned them. However, the warships and aircraft of the
Japanese Navy as a whole represented a fairly congruent implementation of the
Navy’s intended approach to fighting a war. Japanese warships emphasized
speed and offensive firepower, elements that suited the tactical homogeneity the
Japanese always sought. These same general tenets were reflected in the Navy’s
aircraft, with their preference for range, firepower, and maneuverability.
Conversely, Japanese warships placed less importance on structural strength,
stability, protection, and damage control. Likewise, Japanese planes were built to
dish it out but weren’t really intended to take it. They tended to amplify the
advantages of a superbly trained pilot but neglected the preservation of that
pilot’s life. Both Japanese ships and aircraft were more suited to a short naval
conflict, where loss of human capital was less critical. They were not the calling
cards of a navy with true staying power.
It can be argued that Japan’s naval aviation forces were slightly more
immune to the creeping orthodoxy that was slowly choking the Navy’s ability to
think creatively. This had more to do with the newness of naval aviation
technology than anything else. By the 1930s, the battleship was a known
commodity, a relatively “mature” technology. Such technologies tend to develop
in a more incremental fashion, and their mode of employment is typically well
understood. Indeed, apart from the longer range of the weapons, the commander
of a battleship at Jutland would not have been impossibly out of his element
standing twenty years later on the bridge of Yamato.
The aircraft carrier, in contrast, was the Wild West of the world’s major
navies. It was an immature weapons system, being created in front of everyone’s
eyes out of whole cloth. Nobody knew how carriers were supposed to fight or
how they would be integrated within their respective naval forces. Both the ships
and their aircraft were undergoing frantic, almost frightening technological
changes, and their capabilities were improving at phenomenal rates. This, in
turn, continually opened up new tactical and operational possibilities. Under
such circumstances, carrier doctrine was a slate that had to be constantly written,
erased, and then rewritten as new technological imperatives outmoded
yesterday’s beliefs. Not surprisingly, this dynamic environment attracted
individuals who were comfortable with a certain degree of ambiguity and who
had the ambition to put their stamp on the emerging air arm. Simply put, there
was more room for innovation in the area of naval aviation than perhaps
anywhere else within the Japanese Navy.
However, despite the influence of mavericks like Yamamoto and Genda,
naval aviation could not help but be influenced by certain tenets of Japanese
naval thought. The principle of delivering integrated, massed firepower against
an objective was an idea that flowed naturally out of the “Gun Club” and into the
carrier force. Mass has always been a cardinal military principle, and it was this
desire for mass that ultimately led to the establishment of the world’s first true
carrier striking force–First Air Fleet (Dai-ichi K k Kantai)–in April 1941.
The basic idea for this formation had apparently been Genda’s.27 According
to him, he had been watching a movie newsreel, wherein the U.S. fleet was
briefly featured. There, he had caught a glimpse of the U.S. fleet’s Lexington and
Saratoga parading in company with Yorktown and Enterprise. To Genda’s way
of thinking, massing carriers could be used for much more than simply making a
good-looking film clip. It suddenly became clear to him that carriers could be
grouped for tactical purposes, using hundreds of aircraft to project large bursts of
devastating firepower. It took some doing, but eventually Genda persuaded Rear
Admiral Ozawa Jisaburo, who in turn went directly to the Navy minister to
ensure the formation of the organization Genda envisioned.28
First Air Fleet’s establishment was a truly revolutionary development. For
the first time in history there existed an agglomeration of naval air assets (ships,
planes, pilots, and doctrine) that had the potential to create strategically
meaningful results on the battlefield. The British and American navies had
clearly influenced this development (the Japanese were keenly aware of the
British carrier operation against the Italian fleet at Taranto, for instance). But it
was the Imperial Navy that first established massed naval airpower at an
operational level. By doing so, it had moved naval aviation out of its previous
scouting/raiding role and transformed it into a decisive arm of battle.
The attack on Pearl Harbor represented the first clear-cut triumph of this
new mode of warfare. And it is a simple statement of fact that in 1941 no other
navy in the world could have implemented such a daring aerial assault–Kid
Butai alone possessed the combat assets and abilities to do so. Pearl Harbor
demonstrated irrefutably that the Imperial Japanese Navy was no longer
beholden to the West. It had clearly eclipsed the Royal Navy in terms of naval
aviation and was in some ways more advanced than the U.S. Navy as well. This
was particularly true with regards to integrating multiple aircraft carriers into a
cohesive fighting force.
Massing and coordinating multicarrier air groups was something that the
Japanese did exceedingly well. When employed in this way, Japanese doctrine
prescribed attacking targets with groups of aircraft containing elements of all
three disciplines–fighters, dive-bombers, and carrier-attack planes (acting in
either a torpedo-or level-bombing capacity). In multidivision attacks, an entire
carrier division would contribute matched air groups to the overall effort,
launching both of its dive-bomber units (for instance), while a second division
would launch its two carrier attack bomber units. These four squadrons–seventy
or more combat aircraft–would be escorted by fighters contributed by all four
carriers. On follow-up strikes, the air group compositions would be reversed,
with the first division sending up its torpedo bombers and the second
contributing the dive-bombers. The result was that Japanese carriers could
launch large, well-balanced strikes against their enemies.
To support this favored mode of attack, the Japanese evolved a practice
known as “deckload spotting,” wherein a carrier would launch about half of its
air group at any one time–a complete attack unit of some sort (torpedo-or dive-
bombers) and usually a ch tai of fighters. With this initial force launched, the
carrier would still retain half of its striking power for follow-up operations. This
practice probably grew out of the impracticality of launching the carrier’s
complete air group. Such a group would need to be spotted and launched in two
separate deck cycles, thus keeping the first half of the strike package waiting in
the air over the force (and burning precious fuel) while the second portion was
spotted and launched–an operation that could take at least half an hour to
complete. With a deckload strike, though, the Japanese launched a group that fit
comfortably on the flight deck and still had sufficient tactical weight. Indeed, the
smaller carriers like Hiry and S ry would have had difficulty in spotting a
larger force in any case, because their decks would not accommodate the extra
aircraft and still leave enough run-off room forward for takeoff.29 Deckload
strikes had worked well for the Japanese thus far in the war, because they left
little question as to each carrier’s contribution and lent themselves well to
aggregating aircraft for an initial strike. Interestingly, this practice stood in direct
contrast with how the U.S. Navy ran its carriers. U.S. flattops could, and
occasionally did, send their entire air group aloft, although the complications this
introduced into the deck cycles of their carriers would plague them throughout
the coming battle.30
Having worked well for the Japanese, the practice of using deckload strikes
was apparently no longer questioned. Herein lies the cardinal issue that any
analysis of Japan’s options at Midway revolves around–above all things, the
Japanese believed in massing airpower, since delivering concentrated firepower
at range was considered the most effective way of attacking the enemy. In the
words of Ugaki, “This concentrated use of carriers has advantages, making it
possible to command them so that their movement can be concealed, combined
defense against an enemy attack is facilitated, and a combined simultaneous
attack can be launched.”31 As a result, Japanese carrier commanders tended to
look for tactical solutions that allowed airpower to be deployed in an integrated,
multidivisional fashion.32
The weakness of this approach is apparent to anyone who has studied
military affairs, namely, that in combat there are other factors worth considering
besides mass, most notably speed. Thus far in the war, the Japanese had never
been presented with a situation where the speed of their spotting and launching
activities might well be more important than the combat mass delivered thereby.
It remained to be seen whether Japanese air doctrine could react appropriately to
such circumstances should they arise.

As his ships steamed eastward on the 29th, Nagumo took the opportunity of
conducting limited air group training. After the battle, Nagumo would be bitter
in his assessment of his fliers’ deficiencies.33 Carrier landings, torpedo and
bombing attack, air combat, and practically every other index of air group
efficiency came in for scathing treatment from Kid Butai’s chief. However,
upon closer examination, it is likely that these shortcomings were less real than
that they were simply sour grapes on the part of Nagumo.
There’s no question that the carriers of Kid Butai had not had a lot of
formal training during the previous six months. Torpedo practice, which was
typically carried out on well-marked ranges at major bases, was certainly
lacking. Training ranges were required because aerial torpedoes were a precious
commodity. It was therefore important to have the necessary facilities to
retrieve, refurbish, and then reissue them to the air units. Yet, except for a short
sojourn in home waters immediately after Pearl Harbor, and again in May when
Kid Butai returned to Japan, the carriers had spent most of their time in remote
waters with relatively primitive facilities. Anchorages like Staring Bay were
precisely that–a protected place to drop anchor, but hardly “bases” in the
operative sense of the word. There were no torpedo or bomb ranges readily
available in these locations. There were also usually no large airfields nearby
that could accommodate the air groups from as many as six carriers at a time,
meaning that even if training was attempted, it could only be done sporadically
or in smaller groups. The only large-scale training undertaken before May was
around Kendari during late March, in preparation for the raids in the Indian
Ocean.34 During this time, the fliers had drilled in large groups and had sought
to implement new tactics learned as a result of battle lessons. It would appear
that the Kendari sessions were more than just “brush-ups”; they were formally
intended to maintain, and even improve, the proficiency of the air units through
a brief regimen of intensive training. Thus, when Kid Butai engaged in combat
in the Indian Ocean in April, its overall efficiency appears to have been good.
Upon returning to the Inland Sea, the carrier air groups had been split up
and sent to various land installations. Akagi’s group was at Kagoshima in the
extreme southern tip of Japan. Hiry ’s was some eighty miles northeast at
Tomitaka, near Saeki. Kaga’s hikotai was based about twenty-five miles
southeast of Kagoshima at Kanoya, with S ry s close by at Kasanohara. Some
of the bomber leaders were sent to Iwakuni (located just west of Hiroshima).
Even with this distribution, the majority of the aircraft were within eighty miles
of each other, which was a fairly easy distance as far as coordinating group
exercises was concerned. It is true that the training undergone by the air units
immediately before Midway was not satisfactory in all respects. For one thing,
the majority of the carrier training had to occur on Kaga, because the other three
carriers were in and out of dry dock and provisioning at Kure during this time.
As a result, the majority of the exercises necessarily had to be done from the
land bases, because Kaga could only handle a limited number of aircraft during
this time.
However, the bottom line was that Kido Butai was still a very proficient
force. The intensive workups before Pearl Harbor had already honed these men
to a high degree of readiness, and despite the operational losses and transfers that
had occurred since then, there were still a very large number of these senior
aviators left. Thus, Nagumo’s comments regarding the bare margin of
proficiency of his “young fliers” in such basics as carrier landings seem a bit
disingenuous, because by and large these were the same men who had been
performing carrier landings routinely for the last six months in combat
conditions. Because of Kid Butai’s heavy schedule, all of its aircraft had been
constantly in use–fighters for combat air patrol, dive-bombers for ASW patrols,
and Kank for long-range scouting around the fleet–meaning that stick time for
the pilots was hardly a problem.
Nagumo’s comments regarding his aviators are further laid bare by a
detailed examination of the composition of his air group personnel in June 1942.
Fully 70 percent of the pilots in Kid Butais four dive-bomber units were Pearl
Harbor veterans.35 The situation in the Kank groups was even better, with 85
percent of the pilots being Pearl Harbor alumni. Every single pilot in Akagi’s
kank tai had been with the ship in December 1941.36 Furthermore, many of the
new pilots in the air groups were senior petty officers who had most likely been
culled out of shoreside training commands and other billets. Thus, even the
replacement aviators very often also were experienced men. Furthermore, they
had been introduced into the air units in dribs and drabs over the course of the
previous six months, meaning that they had had plenty of time to adjust to their
units and get to know their shipmates.
It is true that the aircrews may have been employing their weapons less
frequently, particularly their torpedoes. For instance, it is unlikely that any of
CarDiv 1’s or 2’s Kank squadrons had dropped a torpedo in anger against an
enemy target since Pearl Harbor. It is possible, therefore, that torpedo
proficiency in the Kank tai may have been reduced. Yet, this was but one index
of air group readiness. And in a broader sense the evidence seems to indicate
that the aircrews still retained proficiency in the employment of their ordnance.
In the Indian Ocean, the dive-bombers had demonstrated on two separate
occasions that they were perfectly capable of attacking fast-moving warships.
Even the relatively junior carriers of CarDiv 5 had performed credibly during the
recent battles in the Coral Sea. It is hard, therefore, to discredit the quality of the
aviators in any of Japan’s fleet carrier divisions at this point in the war. Thus, in
the final analysis, the comments in Nagumo’s report must be taken with a large
grain of salt.
A much more clear-cut problem was the number of planes in Nagumo’s air
groups. The truth was that when it came to aircraft complements throughout the
fleet, things weren’t just fraying around the edges, they were downright awful.37
The Pearl Harbor operation had resulted in aircraft being stripped from other
units to beef up Kid Butai. After the operation had concluded, some of those
units had been returned, but many of the smaller carriers were still little better
than paper tigers. These flattops were flying fewer aircraft than they could carry
and in several cases were being forced to use planes that weren’t fit for frontline
service. Japan had not started the war at a running start in terms of aircraft
production, either. Of the major manufacturers devoted to carrier aircraft
production–Mitsubishi, Nakajima, and Aichi–only Mitsubishi’s fighter line was
running well. Rumor in the fleet had it that there were production problems back
at the other two, because carrier attack aircraft in particular were in short
supply.38
In fact, Nakajima had stopped production of the Type 97 altogether in
anticipation of fielding the new Tenzan torpedo bomber and had to be asked to
restart production to meet war needs. Aichi, the builder of the D3A Type 99
dive-bomber, was in the same position. It was focusing all of its efforts on
ironing out the production issues associated with the new D4Y and was
neglecting production of the older platform. Consequently, by the middle of
1942, production of carrier bombers and attack aircraft had temporarily ground
to a near halt and was completely insufficient to replace ongoing combat and
operational losses. Japan would produce just fifty-six carrier attack aircraft
during all of 1942–a pathetically low figure. Thus, even though Japan had won a
string of stunning victories and its combat losses had been extraordinarily light
for the territory it had gained, Japan’s aircraft industry was not keeping up with
even these modest demands. The result was a dramatic shortage of aircraft
making their way to the fleet.39
Here at the edge of the sword in Nagumo’s own force the effects were
obvious. When the war had opened, Kid Butai’s air groups had been full
strength, although without as many spare aircraft as would have been optimal.
But by June 1942, the situation had deteriorated. At the time of Pearl Harbor,
Akagi had carried sixty-six aircraft; now she had just fifty-four. Kaga had been
cut from seventy-five to sixty-three. S ry and Hiry had come down from
sixty-three apiece to fifty-four apiece.40 Nominally, each squadron (fighter,
bomber, and torpedo bomber) should have been allotted three spare aircraft, for a
total of nine per ship. None were now carried by any ship in Kid Butai, and
Kaga was the only ship that still retained an oversized squadron of twenty-seven
torpedo bombers. The rest of the ships were all operating eighteen aircraft
squadrons, with no spares. In a nutshell, each of the Kid Butai carriers had
suffered a 16 percent decrease in their fighting power since December. Any
casualties to the operating air groups, even damaged aircraft, would immediately
impact the tactical cohesion of the air units, since there were no spare aircraft to
feed into the formations.
Kid Butai’s carrier air groups at Midway were as follows:41

5-4: Kid Butai’s carrier air groups at Midway.

However, in addition to the organic air strength of the carriers themselves,
Kid Butai also had guests along for the operation. Each carrier in the force was
ferrying Zeros of the 6th Air Group (6th Kokutai, often abbreviated simply 6th K
), which were intended as the future garrison of Midway. Twelve of these
fighters were on board Juny with the Second Carrier Striking Force, but the
remainder were assigned to Nagumo’s carriers. Akagi carried six, spacious Kaga
hosted nine, and Hiry and S ry carried three apiece. 44 These aircraft were
stowed fully assembled, because the reduction in Kid Butai’s own air groups
had made space available in the hangars. The 6th Ku aviators had been
welcomed warmly. Some of them were carrier-qualified pilots who could
participate in combat activities in a pinch.45 Nagumo thus had a grand total of
248 aircraft aboard his ships. By way of comparison, Kid Butais six carriers
had brought around 412 aircraft to the Pearl Harbor operation.46 Nagumo was
thus fighting the decisive battle with only 60 percent of the airpower he might
reasonably have expected to use as recently as May.
If the aircraft situation was threadbare in the frontline carriers, it was far
worse in the second-line carrier divisions. They were scraping up pilots and
aircraft in any way they could to try and cobble together air groups, yet in most
cases were falling short. Juny ’s case is illustrative. Recently commissioned, she
was designed to carry fifty-four aircraft. Her dive-bomber group seems to have
been reasonably intact and was composed of fifteen Type 99 aircraft. Her fighter
group, however, was another matter. It was still in the midst of being activated
and was in complete disarray. Twelve of the eighteen Zeros on board ship were
actually aircraft from the 6th Ku. Yet 6th Ku was itself three planes and several
pilots short of its nominal thirty-six plane establishment (the remaining twenty-
one aircraft being with Nagumo). Not only that, but 6th Ku apparently didn’t
have enough aviators to man its own aircraft. Nor could Juny s aviators fill all
the gaps. Indeed, Juny ’s air group for the battle contained only five of its own
pilots. The remainder were four 6th Ku pilots, a trio of aviators (one of whom
was fresh out of flight school) on temporary attached duty (TAD) from Sh kaku,
and two more TAD fliers from Ry j !47 At the same time, though, Juny had
sent one of her own fighter pilots TAD over to S ry . Taken together, this meant
that Juny probably only carried thirty-three aircraft into battle.48 The point to
be made is obvious–not only was Juny understrength, but also her fighter group
at least was composed of men who did not know each other and who had never
exercised together even once. The same was true for all the second-line carriers.
Ry j was carrying thirty aircraft of her forty-eight nominal,49 Zuih twenty-
four out of thirty,50 and H sh a mere eight obsolete biplanes.
In a word, after six months of war, the Japanese carrier force was tired. It
needed rest, refit, and replenishment of its air groups. It needed additional
training. Above all, it needed time for the anemic Japanese aircraft industry to
catch up to the demands of a full-scale war. For a Navy supposedly on the top of
its game, the air groups were going into the decisive battle in a decidedly shabby
fashion–fatigued and desperately short of aircraft. Yet the men were counting on
playing the same game they had played against the Allies for the first six months
of the conflict–using their own superb aviators against inferior enemy pilots and
planes. It had always worked before; why not now as well? The problem, as
some of the men must have suspected, was that they might be going back to the
well once too often, and with too small a bucket.
After 29 May, the Japanese air groups did not participate in any further
training. The hikotai, other than patrol aircraft from the duty carriers, were stood
down for final maintenance. The weather had been good for the first several
days, and the eastward passage had been generally bland and unhurried. But as 1
June wore away, the weather began to turn, and Nagumo’s force headed into
hurrying clouds and a gray overcast.
6

Fog and Final Preparations

An observer hovering high over Midway on the morning of 2 June 1942,

would have beheld a fascinating sight. Swarming over the horizon to the west
and northwest were numerous Japanese naval task forces, most of which were
converging on the tiny atoll below. Foremost among these was Nagumo’s task
force, followed at a distance of several hundred miles by Yamamoto’s Main
Body. The Aleutians forces were already headed into the seemingly never-
ending fog and overcast that surrounded their objectives. Almost due west of
Midway, Tanaka’s invasion force was flanked by Kond and Kurita’s battle
groups. Ahead of them, the individual submarines of the cordon lines were
picking their way toward their posts in solitary stealth. As far as the Japanese
could tell, despite Nagumo’s late departure, all was still going according to
Yamamoto’s design. Yet a further glance over the shoulder would have revealed
a shocking sight. Three American carriers–Enterprise, Hornet, and Yorktown–
had already sailed from Pearl Harbor and were even now poised for battle to the
northeast of Midway.
The events that led to the disclosure of Japan’s designs at Midway to the
enemy need only a brief retelling here. Just as American cryptographic prowess
had allowed the U.S. Navy to thwart Inoue’s thrust into the Coral Sea, so too it
had revealed Yamamoto’s intentions concerning Midway. As a result, Admiral
Chester W. Nimitz was given enough warning, just barely, to assemble his
forces in time to defend the island. It was a near-run thing, but the Americans
showed great ingenuity and determination in using their more-limited assets to
the greatest possible effect.
Nimitz had no clear idea as to Japanese intentions until very late in the
game. It was not until 9 May that American intelligence began suspecting that
operations might be afoot in the Central Pacific, perhaps in the form of a raid
against Hawaii.1 Around the same time, the American code-breaking station in
Hawaii (known as HYPO) became aware of a “forthcoming campaign” that
would demand the services of many battleships, carriers, and screening
destroyers.2 Furthermore, after the mysterious operation, these forces were going
to be reassembled at Saipan, which in turn indicated that the preceding operation
would occur in the Central Pacific.3 At the same time, traffic analysis was
recording an increase in message traffic between Akagi and subordinate
commands like BatDiv 3. In the eyes of HYPO, Midway became the logical
place for such an operation.
Nimitz himself was playing a dangerous game with his own superior, the
demanding Admiral Ernest J. King, commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet. King
remained nervous about a renewed Japanese offensive in the South Pacific,
which his own intelligence chiefs were convinced remained the main objective
of the Imperial Navy. Even before the Battle of Coral Sea, he had ordered
Nimitz to commit Enterprise and Hornet to the region. Now, with Lexington
sunk and Yorktown damaged, he wanted to keep them there. Nimitz, however,
had confidence in the analysis of his intelligence staff and was determined to
bring his carriers back to Pearl. In a daring move, Nimitz ordered Vice Admiral
William Halsey, in an eyes-only communiqué to the latter aboard Enterprise, to
deliberately expose his force to the Japanese. On the morning of 17 May, Task
Force 16 was sighted by a Japanese flying boat operating out of Tulagi.4 HYPO
duly intercepted Japanese messages raising the alarm about American carriers,
allowing Nimitz to use Halsey’s manufactured sighting as reason to cancel his
current mission and order Enterprise and Hornet back to Hawaii.
Meanwhile, Nimitz and HYPO still needed a breakthrough that would
definitely confirm Midway as Japan’s near-term objective. Nimitz’s
cryptographers devised an ingenuous stratagem to divine the location of the
attack. On 19 May, on instructions from HYPO, Midway’s radio station
broadcast in clear that the island’s desalinization plant had broken down.5 Just
one day later, the Americans broke a Japanese message giving the objective’s
call sign (MI) and indicating that a water ship should accompany the occupation
forces. The Americans now definitely knew that Midway was the target of the
forthcoming Japanese offensive. While the timing of the operation was still in
doubt, the first cornerstone of Yamamoto’s plan–the element of strategic
surprise-had been irretrievably lost.
Another of Yamamoto’s fundamental assumptions–that the U.S. Navy
would need to be coaxed into battle–was erroneous as well. In fact, Nimitz was
spoiling for a fight. His beliefs mirrored Yamamoto’s in at least one regard–the
most effective way to win the war was to bring the enemy’s carriers to battle and
defeat them. Nimitz’s willingness to fight rested on two assumptions.6 First, he
was convinced that his commanders and crewmen, as demonstrated in the Coral
Sea battles, were the match of their Japanese opposite numbers. Second, Nimitz
believed that his advantage in strategic intelligence would allow his forces to
ambush Kido Butai. Now, his only problem was finding the necessary numbers
of carriers.
HYPO’s estimates indicated that the Japanese would launch their attack
with four or five flattops, probably operating in two groups. Nimitz had to figure
out how to roughly match their numbers.7 The U.S. Navy had begun the war
with seven carriers. One of these, Ranger, was no longer deemed fit for frontline
service. This left six fleet units–Lexington, Saratoga, Yorktown, Enterprise,
Hornet, and Wasp. The Lexington had been sunk at the Battle of Coral Sea.
Wasp was currently engaged in the Mediterranean, ferrying British Spitfires to
Malta, although she had been ordered to move to the Pacific immediately
thereafter. Saratoga, having been torpedoed by a Japanese submarine on 11
January, had been repairing and refitting on the West Coast, and as of the end of
May was still furiously putting together her air group and collecting enough
escorts to sail. She would not be able to reach Pearl Harbor until 7 June.
American intelligence estimates had the Japanese opening operations against
Midway as early as 2 June, meaning that their own carriers would need to be in
position off the island by the 1st.8 Saratoga was therefore out of the picture. This
left the Yorktown-class carriers available to contest Japanese moves.
Unfortunately, Yorktown herself had been badly damaged by bombs during
the same battle that had claimed the Lexington at Coral Sea. Trailing a slick of
oil from storage tanks that had been cracked as a result of a near miss, she had
limped back to Pearl Harbor, arriving the same day Nagumo had sortied. Yet her
presence in the coming Midway operation was absolutely vital. Although Nimitz
was willing to do it, he knew that pitting just two American carriers against four
of their Japanese opposite numbers was an extremely risky proposition, even
with Midway-based aircraft backing them up. But with the addition of a third
flight deck, the U.S. Navy could match the Japanese in total numbers of aircraft.
It was essential that Yorktown be returned to working order as soon as possible.
In contrast with the Japanese lack of urgency about getting Zuikaku back
into action, the Americans had moved heaven and earth on Yorktown’s behalf.
Returning to Pearl Harbor on 27 May, she had first entered the repair basin,
where 1,400 workmen had clambered on board and gotten to work.9 She was
then into dry dock on the 28th.10 Realistically, Yorktown needed a three-month
refit. Instead, she would receive slightly more than forty-eight hours of
emergency repairs. It was an all-hands, around-the-clock effort, with some of the
personnel simply working straight through without sleep. At the same time,
Yorktown received replacements of three of her squadrons. Saratoga’s Bombing
Three (VB-3) took the place of Yorktown’s Scouting Five (VS-5), which had
suffered heavy casualties at Coral Sea. Likewise, Fighting Three largely replaced
VF-42,11 and Torpedo Three replaced VT-5. The fact that the Americans could
insert replacement air groups into a carrier that they had never served aboard,
while the Japanese hadn’t even attempted a similar operation with the surviving
aircraft from Sh kaku that had already been sitting in Zuikaku, gives testimony
to the superior organizational skills that the U.S. Navy was already beginning to
draw upon in the conflict.
By 0900 on 30 May, Yorktown headed back to sea, forming the core of
American Task Force 17. She carried seventy-six aircraft–twenty-five F4F
fighters, thirty-seven SBD divebombers, and fourteen TBD torpedo bombers.12
With Yorktown went two heavy cruisers–Astoria and Portland–and five
destroyers–Hammann, Hughes, Morris, Anderson, and Russell.
Yorktown’s two sisterships, Enterprise and Hornet, had sortied the day
before as Task Force 16. Enterprise carried seventy-eight aircraft (twenty-seven
F4F fighters, thirty-seven SBD divebombers, and fourteen TBD torpedo
bombers); Hornet carried seventy-seven (twenty-seven F4F fighters, thirty-five
SBD divebombers, and fifteen TBD torpedo bombers).13 Around them were the
heavy cruisers New Orleans, Minneapolis, Vincennes, Northampton, and
Pensacola, and the brand-new light cruiser Atlanta. A screen of nine
destroyers–Phelps, Worden, Monaghan, Aylwin, Balch, Conyngham, Benham,
Ellet, and Maury–completed the force.
Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, flying his flag in Yorktown, would have
tactical command of the carrier striking forces, as well as direct control over TF
17. He was a veteran of much action already in the war, having been at sea since
the commencement of hostilities. Fletcher was a careful commander and
certainly somewhat more cautious than his counterpart, Halsey. He had been
taught some lessons in this regard at the Battle of Coral Sea just prior. Much like
Admiral Takagi, the American commander had struck an aggressive blow
against what he presumed to be the main Japanese task force, only to discover
that he had launched an all-out attack against the light carrier Sh h . While
sinking her was useful, it had been something of a waste and had left Fletcher’s
own forces exposed. It was an error he did not intend to repeat.

6-1: The experienced Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, commander of the
American carrier forces. (Photo courtesy John Lundstrom)

By rights, Fletcher’s senior officer in Task Force 16 should have been Vice
Admiral Halsey, who had commanded the forces centered on Enterprise since
the beginning of the war. However, Halsey had recently contracted shingles,
making it impossible for him to sleep. As a result, upon returning to Pearl he was
immediately placed on medical leave, leaving a gap in the command structure.
Nimitz asked Halsey for his recommendation for a replacement, and to Nimitz’s
great surprise, he nominated his cruiser commander, Rear Admiral Raymond A.
Spruance. Spruance was not a carrier man and had never commanded a mixed
task force before. Nevertheless, Halsey had such complete confidence in his
abilities that Nimitz was persuaded that Spruance would make a sound choice.
It is ironic that the hot-tempered and profane Halsey had such utter faith in
a man so completely his opposite. Spruance was a very cool customer. A man
defined almost totally by his intellect, he was articulate, careful, methodical, and
extremely attentive to detail. Upon assuming command of Task Force 16, he
wasn’t overawed by his own lack of knowledge regarding naval aviation. But he
also had the intellectual honesty to be aware of his shortcomings, and he took
rapid steps to fill in the gaps. As events were to prove, he was also aggressive,
calculating, and a commander who would not panic in adversity.
Altogether, the American carriers brought 233 aircraft to the fight, just
fifteen fewer than Nagumo’s carrier force. However, the American carriers had
much less experience in joint operations than did the Japanese. Furthermore,
Task Force 16 and 17 intended to fight separately, often out of eyesight of each
other, making coordination problematic. It was hoped, however, that dispersal
would make it more difficult for the Japanese to detect and attack all of the
American carriers simultaneously.

6-2: Rear Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, commander of Task Force 16. (Naval
Historical Center)

Nimitz had not been idle in reinforcing Midway’s own air strength.
Commanded by Captain Cyril T. Simard, Midway was currently operating four
squadrons, composed of thirty-one PBY Catalina patrol planes. These planes
were aggressively pushing reconnaissance flights out to 700 miles from the atoll.
By 4 June Eastern Island’s airstrip was stuffed to the rafters with another ninety-
six aircraft of all sorts, including Navy, Marine Corps, and Army Air Force
attack planes. There was a squadron of seventeen B-17 heavy bombers, as well
as a foursome of B-26 medium bombers fitted for carrying torpedoes. The
Marines had contributed a squadron of twenty-one old Brewster F2A Buffalo
fighters and seven F4F Wildcats, and a squadron of nineteen SBD divebombers
and twenty-one older SB2U scout and a squadron of nineteen SBD divebombers
and twenty-one older SB2U scout bombers. The Navy brought in a detachment
of six brand-new TBF torpedo planes and a light utility plane. In all, 127 U.S.
aircraft were temporarily calling Midway home. The increase in the numbers and
range of patrols, as well as the much larger air group at the base meant that by 1
June the base’s aviation fuel consumption had exploded to 65,000 gallons daily,
against a total of about 150,000 gallons of avgas storage on the island.14 Keeping
the air station supplied with fuel was quickly becoming a problem.
Nimitz placed his forces brilliantly, ordering Fletcher to hold his carriers
some 300 miles to the northeast of Kid Butai’s anticipated axis of advance.
From this otherwise indistinguishable spot of ocean, named “Point Luck” (32N,
173W), his carriers would be in a position to ambush the Japanese after the
enemy launched their aircraft against Midway. By steering clear of the waters
south of the island, he was well positioned to avoid any possible entanglements
with the various advancing Japanese formations. Here, the Americans were more
exposed to attack, but they were also in a better position to launch their own
surprise assault on the Japanese flank. Nimitz didn’t know the exact composition
of the enemy forces, but he was confident that he could give battle under
favorable terms as long as he retained the element of surprise. He had also
deployed a strong group of twelve American fleet boats around Midway itself,
which would hopefully weaken any Japanese force and open it up to attack.
Despite the boldness of his plan, Nimitz felt no need for a do-or-die effort
in defense of the atoll. He expected his carrier admirals to attack aggressively
but judiciously, seeking opportunities to inflict maximum damage at the
minimum cost in what was termed “strong attritional tactics.” Under no
circumstances were the carriers to be sacrificed unnecessarily. If the situation
became untenable, they were to back off and let the Japanese attempt an
invasion. Nimitz understood the logistical situation of the atoll better than the
Japanese did themselves, knowing that he would be in a better position to retake
the islands than the Japanese would be to defend it. As a result, preserving the
three American flight decks was more important than preserving the Marine
garrison there.
However, the Marines had taken their own measures to ensure that if it ever
came to a fight, they would be able to face the Japanese on the best terms
possible. Their Sixth Defense Battalion, under the energetic leadership of Col.
Harold D. Shannon, had been stiffened by the addition of two companies of elite
Marine Raiders. A platoon of light tanks had been sequestered in the tiny pine
forest at the center of Sand Island. The men had engaged in a frenzy of defensive
preparations–digging multiple lines of emplacements, hardening heavy weapons
sites, and clearing fields of fire across the beaches. They had laid thickets of
barbed wire around their perimeters and entrenched their communications lines.
And they had improvised an array of lethal explosive booby traps and mines to
strew across the beaches and landing approaches. Midway’s two islands now
bristled with defenses. Even a heavily supported Japanese landing would have
found the going very difficult. (See Appendix 5 for an analysis of the likely
outcome of such a landing operation.) Thus, by 1 June, after weeks of frantic
work, everything was coming together for the Americans.
The same was hardly true of the Japanese. Indeed, an omniscient observer
would also have noticed that by this time the Japanese strategic scouting plan for
Operation MI had fallen completely to pieces. The submarine cordon lines, upon
which Nagumo was counting for early warning of northward-advancing
Americans, were tardy in taking their positions, having left Kwajalein late. But
even had they left on time they would have missed the American carriers. By the
time Cordon A and B were established, the Americans had already slipped past
it.
The reasons for the failure of the submarine picket lines, which were not
properly understood until after the war, verge on the scandalous.15 The
commander of Sixth Fleet, Japan’s submarine forces, was Vice Admiral Marquis
Komatsu Teruhisa, the cousin of the empress of Japan, and a close personal
friend of Emperor Hirohito. The marquis was a great fan of Yamamoto’s and
had such confidence in the Midway operation that in his opinion the battle was
as good as won. So much so, in fact, that he was already preoccupied with
follow-up plans to attack the Panama Canal and terrorize California. He thus
paid little attention to the nuts and bolts of the deployment against Midway.
While he was supposed to be at the staff planning sessions held on board
Yamato, Komatsu did not attend, sending his staff instead.16 Furthermore,
according to Gordon Prange, the submarine cordon details “never appeared in
the official orders for Operation MI. Writing up the submarine portion of such
orders was a normal responsibility of Commander Arima Takayasu,
Yamamoto’s submarine officer. But for some reason, Captain Kuroshima told
Arima that he had no need to do so.”17 This rather incredible oversight meant
that the Japanese boats were committed to action without a workable operational
plan.
Furthermore, the boats that were tasked for the operation–the older vessels
of SubRon 5–were far from ideal for the mission. None of them could dive
safely past 200 feet,18 and all of them were under refit during the April–May
period, with the intent of being shortly moved into the reserve fleet and relegated
to training purposes. Not surprisingly, Commander Iura Sh jir of Naval GHQ’s
submarine staff protested to Admiral Fukudome that the boats were too slow and
balky to get on station in a timely manner, nor could they cope with air attacks
and patrols once they got there.19 His protests fell on deaf ears.
As matters developed, Iura was completely correct in his estimation of
SubRon 5’s weaknesses. Their overhauls took too long, and the boats were late
in leaving Kwajalein, departing between 26 and 30 May. Worse yet, the long
daylight hours, coupled with intensifying American patrol activity, meant that
the boats had only limited time during the night to transit on the surface. During
the days they were often forced to dive to avoid Catalinas, creeping forward
submerged as best they could. The result was that while the boats were
scheduled to be in place by 1 June (local), some of them didn’t reach their
stations until 3 June, by which time the American carriers had already passed
through.20 Had the American task forces been sighted in the vicinity, Yamamoto
and Nagumo would have had both actionable information and the time to make
last-minute adjustments to their operational plans. As it was, they received
neither.
This would have been bad enough, but even worse was the fact that
Admiral Komatsu was fully aware that his force had taken up their stations late,
but did not relay this up the chain of command. On or about 3 June, Komatsu
notified Admiral Yamamoto of the failure of Operation K (described shortly).21
However, he did not call Yamamoto’s attention to the fact that his picket
submarines had arrived late on station. Obviously, this was a serious oversight, if
oversight it was. The net result was that not only did Yamamoto and Nagumo
not know whether the American carriers had sortied toward Midway or not, they
weren’t even aware that they didn’t know. In fact, they didn’t know that there
was any problem with their scouting arrangements at all.
It would appear that because of Komatsu’s membership in the imperial
family, he was never held to account for this crucial failure. As one observer
later noted, “Japanese historians in later years would allude to [the event] only
obliquely, and American historians … would [necessarily] follow the lead of the
Japanese.”22 One example of such an oblique reference is supplied by Admiral
Ugaki, who remarked after the battle in his diary that “we failed to make good
use of subs in reconnaissance,” despite having ordered the cordons in place to
prevent the very sort of ambush that in fact occurred.23
Komatsu’s oversights, though, might have been made good, if the Japanese
were willing to put some of the other pieces of the puzzle together. Indeed, as
the Japanese advanced, they began receiving evidence that the Americans were
wise to at least some of Yamamoto’s initial deployments. On 30 May, shortly
after Admiral Tanaka’s Invasion Force sortied from Saipan, an American
submarine dead ahead had been overheard broadcasting a long coded message of
an urgent nature.24 Given that Tanaka’s force was on course almost directly for
its ultimate objective, it would not take much for the Americans to figure out
where he was headed. In addition, the Japanese had noted via radio intercepts
that an increased number of American submarines were operating in the mid-
Pacific and Aleutians.25
Closer to the battle area, Operation K, the seaplane scouting effort aimed at
assessing the status of Pearl Harbor, had had to be aborted on the 31st. One of
the Japanese refueling subs, the I-121, approaching French Frigate Shoals on the
27th, had found that the previously isolated islet had now become the abode of
an American seaplane tender and her destroyer consort. The Japanese submarine
was shortly joined by her sister, I-123, but the Americans showed no signs of
departing. On the 30th, I-123 reluctantly radioed headquarters at Kwajalein
regarding the setback. Operation K was postponed for twenty-four hours in the
vain hope that the Americans would move on the following day. However, the
next morning American flying boats were now seen moored in the lagoon.
French Frigate Shoals was clearly an operational American seaplane base.
Attacking their ships would only bring attention to the area, but without them
gone, there was no way that the huge Kawanishi flying boats could refuel.
Operation K had to be scrubbed, thus depriving Nagumo of any intelligence
regarding the American’s main fleet base.
Submarine I-168, meanwhile, had been scouting Midway itself. Her
captain, Lt. Commander Tanabe Yahachi, submitted a comprehensive report on
2 June concerning the activities he had observed there. The atoll was mounting
an average of nearly 100 flights daily. The seaplanes were gone much of the
daylight hours, meaning that they were patrolling aggressively out to great
distances. At night, blazing work lights indicated that construction was
proceeding around the clock.26 Midway did not appear to be a sleepy backwater
unaware of its approaching fate. On the contrary, the atoll had every appearance
of an outpost doubly on its guard. Commander Tanabe’s reports were duly sent
up the chain of command but apparently didn’t make much of an impression.
Japanese radio intercept stations in Japan, Truk, and Saipan had also
noticed that American radio traffic emanating from Hawaii was up.27
Additionally, many of the orders being sent by Nimitz to his subordinates were
tagged “Urgent.” Taken together, Japanese traffic analysis seemed to indicate
that American heavy forces were probably operating at sea, rather than sitting in
Pearl Harbor.28
The question is, how much of this information actually came into
Nagumo’s hands as he sailed toward battle, and did he act on it? The
conventional wisdom, as promulgated by Fuchida Mitsuo’s postwar account,
Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, is that Nagumo was completely in the
dark regarding all of these matters except the failure of Operation K.29
Nagumo’s own report states flatly that the Americans were not aware of
Japanese plans and that his forces were not discovered until the morning of 5
June (4 June Midway time).30 Fuchida blamed this failure in part on Combined
Fleet staff’s decision on board Yamato to not transmit information forward to
Nagumo, and also on Akagi’s poor communications capabilities, resulting from
her allegedly small island and limited number of radio aerials.31 However,
neither of these excuses really stands up to scrutiny.
First of all, Akagi’s problems with communications, if there were any,
likely had less to do with the number or quality of her aerials than it did with
their height above the surface of the ocean. All Japanese carriers suffered from
this problem, in that they had relatively small bridge structures and mainmasts.
Consequently, there were few places high in the ship to place an aerial, which in
turn explains their location on the sides of the flight decks. When flight
operations were under way, they were cranked into their horizontal positions,
away from the flight deck and any potential accidents, thus lowering them
further and hampering their use for communications. This was a known
weakness of making an aircraft carrier a flagship, yet the Japanese accepted
these drawbacks to exercise better local control over the task force’s various air
groups.32 However, despite these shortcomings, it is equally clear that Kido
Butai’s communications did not rely solely on Akagi’s equipment.

6-3: Battleship Haruna, fl agship BatDiv 3 (Second Section). (Photo courtesy
Todaka Kazushige)

The Japanese communications plan for Midway called for each ship’s
wireless receivers to be continuously manned and tuned to the broadcast of the
First Communications Unit in Tokyo, which was responsible for relaying all
messages received from units of Combined Fleet back out to the forces at sea.
Each of Nagumo’s twenty ships, plus the six ships of the Supply Unit, were thus
continuously on the alert for communications from Tokyo and would relay such
information first to their respective unit flagships and then on up to the force
flagship (Akagi) as the need arose. In addition to listening for Tokyo’s
broadcasts, every vessel in Kido Butai that had sufficient receivers was also
listening to enemy frequencies, hoping to intercept enemy aircraft and submarine
transmissions.33 This latter function was the responsibility of each ship’s radio
direction finding (RDF) unit, such equipment being carried by all of the larger
ships.
 Both Haruna and Kirishima had communications facilities befitting a
capital ship, including radio aerials mounted high atop their towering mainmasts.
It is known that one of BatDiv 3’s vessels (most likely Haruna) was officially
designated as a backup battle force communications facility in the event of an
emergency.34 The brand-new cruisers Tone and Chikuma also had quite modern
facilities.35 Even old Nagara’s RDF and radio outfit had been upgraded in
1936.36 All in all, Kido Butai seems to have been well equipped to receive
instructions from either Tokyo or Combined Fleet Headquarters (Yamato). It
also mounted adequate equipment for intercepting and localizing enemy radio
transmissions. Indeed, the overall problem with Japanese communications had
less to do with their inability to receive information than it did with Japanese
emphasis on radio silence, as well as commanders’ tendencies to gloss over or
equivocate regarding transmitting bad news. Without a willingness to evaluate
and act on information, all the radio equipment in the world wasn’t going to help
Nagumo.
The radio reports surrounding the failure of Operation K illustrate how the
system was supposed to work. I-123’s messages regarding French Frigate Shoals
were broadcast upward to her headquarters at Sixth Fleet in Kwajalein.
Kwajalein, in turn, was required to keep Saipan, Truk, Wake, Combined Fleet
HQ (at sea), and (most important) the First Communications Unit at Tokyo in
the loop. First Communications Unit was then responsible for rebroadcasting
pertinent information back out to the various fleet commands. This is exactly
what happened on the 31st with I-123’s reports. Both Fuchida and Ugaki
acknowledge in their accounts that the Main Body received these messages.37 In
other words, the system (with its very centralized control of communications)
was working. It was successfully passing information from low-level units up
the chain of communications and then back out to the various commands
(although it is unclear whether Yamato received I-123’s initial message, Sixth
Fleet’s report of the incident to Tokyo, First Communications Unit’s
rebroadcast, or some mixture of these three sources).38 I-168’s report on the 2nd
regarding enemy activity at Midway was similarly received on Yamato.
It is true that even with modern facilities, Kid Butai might well have
suffered a communications breakdown. Merely having radios tuned to the right
frequency was no guarantee that Nagumo was actually receiving the information
he needed. Indeed, such failures plagued both the Japanese and Americans
during the early portions of the war. However, Akagi’s air group report provides
compelling evidence that the admiral and his staff were much better informed on
the matter of American activities than the common wisdom would have us
believe. Akagi’s report specifically notes increased patrolling by American
aircraft operating out of Midway starting around 29 May. It also cites the
increased presence of enemy submarines whose goal was apparently
reconnoitering the Japanese forces. Crucially, both of these items were described
as having been derived from either radio intelligence and/or Japanese
reconnaissance aircraft. More important, the report further indicates that
“According to Naval General Staff service message radio intelligence of 31
May, for the last several days there has been a tendency for the number of enemy
vessels participating in the Pacific Air Base Communications System and the
General Ships Communications System centered at Honolulu to increase.”39
Several aspects of Akagi’s report bear elaboration. First, it is specific that
the information in hand had been derived from other units, not Kid Butai.
Second, the fact that it describes the conditions of the enemy on both 29 and 31
May means that this information was received by Akagi after she sailed from
Hashirajima. If so, then she had to have received messages from the First
Communications Unit. Ugaki’s diary makes mention of the very same data being
received on board Yamato on the 29th as well, indicating that Akagi and Nagumo
were receiving Tokyo’s transmissions just fine.40 Finally, the fact that Akagi’s
report describes these three pieces of intelligence information under the heading
of “Enemy Situation before the Battle” clearly implies that Nagumo had
received this data prior to the engagement.
The matter of the transmitting American submarine off of Saipan is
interesting as well. Fuchida’s account asserts that it was the radio intercept unit
aboard Yamato that detected the American boat. However, Admiral Ugaki, who
was actually on board Yamato at the time, mentions only that the submarine’s
messages had been intercepted, not by whom. Given the proximity of land-based
radio equipment at the fleet base at Saipan, and the fact that Yamato had barely
cleared the coast of Japan at the time the intercept was made, it would appear
much more likely that Yamato’s interception (if it occurred at all) was merely a
supplement to a detection by Saipan’s own RDF unit. Such a radio intercept
would have been communicated directly to Tokyo by the Fifth Communications
Unit at Saipan, and thence back out to the fleet, where Nagumo would likely
have received it as well. In sum, it appears likely that Nagumo was less in the
dark about the Americans’ alertness than has been believed. If he did not have
the complete puzzle in hand, he at least had a number of the important pieces.41
Taking Akagi’s report at face value, Nagumo should have known three
things. First, that American patrol aircraft out of Midway were operating far
afield and that the risk of detection was high. This placed the invasion forces to
his south at particular risk, because Nagumo’s tardy departure had, in essence,
placed Tanaka one day ahead of where he should have been relative to Kid
Butai. This, in turn, meant that Nagumo could not count on the timing of the
battle unfolding as planned. Second, given the increase in enemy signal traffic, it
was likely that the American fleet carriers were engaged in urgent operations
somewhere in the Pacific. Third, with the failure of Operation K, he was now
completely devoid of any credible intelligence on the enemy’s strength and
movements. The American carriers could literally be anywhere. Given no clear-
cut evidence for either an optimistic or pessimistic estimate of the enemy’s
dispositions, a prudent commander should have planned for the worst case.
The question is, why did he apparently not bother to recast his plans? At the
very least, why did he not make arrangements to beef up his scouting assets, so
as to completely assure himself that there would be no surprises? There are a
number of explanations for this. The first probably hinges on the lack of any
direct information from Komatsu’s tardy submarine picket line. Another factor is
the general contempt in which the American forces were held at this time by the
Japanese. Despite the setback at Coral Sea, the fact remained that the Japanese
had reeled off an almost unbroken string of victories in the first six months of
the war. Tired air groups and aviators notwithstanding, the Japanese, and
especially the members of Combined Fleet staff, believed that they were better
than the Americans: no matter where, when, or under what circumstances they
met. Admiral Ugaki, commenting on the possibility of Tanaka’s transport force
having been detected sooner than planned off of Saipan, remarked in his diary
that “its premature discovery might lead to a showdown with the enemy force,
which is rather welcome.”42 Such an attitude of supreme confidence bespoke the
general attitude throughout the fleet–simply showing up was apparently all that
was required for Nagumo to secure the victory.
Whatever his faults, though, Nagumo does not come across as an arrogant
man, nor does he seem to have been rash, as the following anecdote illustrates.
Following the return of Kid Butai to Kyushu after its sortie into the Indian
Ocean in April, a technical research conference was held at Kanoya air base to
begin planning for the development of the Zero fighter’s successor. Present were
representatives from K k Hombu (the Navy Air Technical Bureau) and the
Yokosuka Air Group (which was the Navy’s test pilot squadron).
Representatives from Kid Butai, including Nagumo, were there to provide the
latest in direct combat experience. Mitsubishi’s Horikoshi Jiro, the famed
designer of the Zero, was present, as was Lt. Cdr. Nagamori Yoshio, who
represented the fighter airframe section from K k Hombu. Both men later
report that the mood of overweening self-confidence among the airmen was
palpable, especially among the fighter pilots. Any attempt at cautious analysis or
measured debate tended to get pushed aside by their unlimited exuberance.
After the conference, the participants attended a dinner hosted by Nagumo.
The admiral dutifully made the rounds, exchanging toasts of sake with everyone
present. When he came to Nagamori, Nagumo sat down on the tatami mat and
crossed his legs in front of the young lieutenant commander. According to
Nagamori, Nagumo said to him, quite emphatically, “Don’t take what the men of
the fleet tell you at face value. At times we tend to be swayed by emotion and
give opinions based on the momentum of the moment. Your job is to take all
factors into consideration and reach a cool and balanced conclusion.”43 This was
not a reckless individual, nor one given to being dismissive of the enemy.
If true, though, what are the reasons for Nagumo’s lack of initiative in
terms of incorporating current intelligence into his operational planning? First of
all, it is not clear that Nagumo’s orders allowed him to improvise if the need
arose. All the senior officers in the fleet knew that Yamamoto had not been
inclined to change even the tiniest details of his grand scheme at any point
during the previous two months of planning. Having been previously castigated
by the commander in chief over his performance at Pearl Harbor, Nagumo
would hardly be inclined to take matters into his own hands unless the situation
clearly warranted it. The intelligence he had may have been worrisome, but that
was about it. Without concrete information to act on, Nagumo may have simply
judged that the wisest course was to continue with what he was doing and attend
to any unpleasant realities as they arose.
This rather passive, fatalistic outlook was further compounded by an
institutional weakness on the part of the Japanese military toward improvisation.
The truth of the matter was that an inability to change their plans in midstride
was endemic to the Japanese military as a whole. Nagumo was emotionally and
by training a creation of this military tradition. He didn’t know how to
improvise, and he didn’t want to try. But really, why would anyone expect him
to be otherwise? He was the product of a military that placed obedience above
all other virtues, a military that had succeeded in snuffing out the flame of
individuality in the majority of its officers, a military that for four years would
send men to their deaths in the blindest, most stupid ways imaginable. For a
Western historian, this is one of the most maddening aspects of the Japanese
Navy to contemplate: that in many cases the Japanese almost seemed to view
defeat and their own deaths as the easier option to take, rather than shouldering
the mental burden of having to reason their way out of unanticipated problems.
Nagumo, despite his exalted position and responsibility, in the final analysis
behaved as he ought to have behaved–by acting as the unquestioning tool of a
supreme commander who was himself a demonstrated autocrat. Whatever
Nagumo’s failings as an operational leader, the final responsibility for his
unwillingness to improvise must be laid firmly at the feet of the man whose
flawed strategic outlook had created the mess in the first place, and the military
culture that had let all of this occur.

On the morning of 2 June (1 June for the American forces), the weather around
Kid Butai began to worsen noticeably. By 1000, the force was beset by fog,
which worsened through the day, until by evening Nagumo’s ships were
shrouded in an impenetrable white cloud. The situation was no better on the
morning of the 3rd. All the ships streamed buoys aft, so that the vessels
following them would be able to determine if they were overhauling a hidden
ship in front.44 Yet the ships still had to attempt to zigzag, and keeping station
was a nightmare.45 Akagi’s navigator, Commander Gishiro Miura, was a bundle
of nerves but tried to affect a casual air by padding about the bridge in his
slippers.46 His tiny three-by-four-foot map table was now the center of Akagi’s
world, as he strained to keep the flagship heading in the right direction while
fretting about what the other ships might be doing out there in the gloom.
On the right side of the bridge, clustered around the fifteen-centimeter
spotting glasses, Nagumo and his staff tried to stay out of the way. Nagumo
stared out the windows into the opaque white walls surrounding him.
Occasionally, one of the force’s escorts would heave momentarily into view at
the apex of a zigzag but then was almost immediately lost to sight again.
Nagumo’s anxiety was high. He was scheduled to change course southeast this
morning to begin the final approach to the objective. In normal conditions, this
would be executed with ease, but visual communications were now almost out of
the question. Waiting until the appointed hour arrived and then trusting that
every ship in the task force would simply execute a smooth turn to starboard was
a fool’s hope–a collision was almost guaranteed. Some sort of positive action
had to be taken to assure the coordination of the force, or Kid Butai might not
make its designated flying-off spot in time. However, the fleet was currently
steaming under a formal state of absolute radio silence (Condition “Te-Se-Ka”).
As such, radio transmission was only authorized in emergencies where
operations required it. Under this condition, Nagumo alone was empowered to
make decisions regarding the usage of the fleet’s radios.47
On the bridge, the situation was tense, as Nagumo and his staff debated
what to do. Kusaka’s deputy, Captain Oishi, was in favor of sticking to the
schedule.48 But in the next breath he noted that the entire invasion schedule was
dependent on attacking Midway on 5 June. Nagumo finally came down in favor
of venturing a radio transmission. At 1030, the order was given over Akagi’s
medium frequency set: “At 1200 hours, change to course 100 degrees.”49
Nagumo and First Air Fleet staff fervently hoped that the Americans would not
be the wiser to their low-power broadcast. There was no way of telling, of
course, whether the enemy was now alerted to their plans.50

6-4: Situation on 4 June (Tokyo time). This map shows the relative movements
and positions of the various Japanese formations during 4 June. Of particular
importance is the relatively forward deployment of the various invasion forces–a
result of Nagumo’s delayed departure from Hashirajima. (Source: Senshi S sho,
p. 242)

At noon, Nagumo’s force made its appointed turn. Almost immediately, as
if in mockery, the weather began to clear. Kid Butai’s thirsty destroyers, which
had been forced to suspend fueling activities the previous day, at once began
sidling up to their designated oilers. Fueling went slowly, and the force still
encountered heavy intermittent fog banks. Nevertheless, it seemed that the worst
of the weather was behind them.

Meanwhile, far to the south, this day had not been without complications for
Tanaka’s invasion force, as the Americans had become aware of his approach.
At 0843 on the 4th, a PBY Catalina had stumbled across Captain Miyamoto’s
Minesweeper Group. About forty-five minutes later, a different PBY had sighted
Admiral Tanaka’s group, which was at that point almost 700 miles due west
from the atoll. Initially misidentified by the American pilot as the Japanese Main
Body, it took until nearly 1100 for Midway’s air commander to satisfy himself
that Tanaka’s force did not, in fact, contain the Japanese heavy units.
Nevertheless, it was a significant enough force to be worth attacking.
Accordingly, nine B-17s from the 431st Bombardment Squadron were
dispatched against Tanaka shortly after noon.
The bombers took more than four hours to reach Tanaka, arriving overhead
at 1623. For all the formidable reputation that Japanese lookouts were to develop
in subsequent engagements, this one did them little credit, because the
Americans were able to set up their initial runs at altitudes between 8,000 and
12,000 feet without the transports arrayed neatly below them apparently being
aware of their presence. Only at the last minute, with bombs exploding around
them, did the Japanese vessels realize their peril and begin jinking to avoid the
incoming ordnance. As luck would have it, no hits were scored on any of
Tanaka’s charges. The Japanese force quickly put up a hasty, heavy antiaircraft
barrage, but it did no good. After about ten minutes overhead, the American
aircraft withdrew. Tanaka promptly radioed news of his encounter out to
Combined Fleet.

The morning of 4 June had also seen the detachment of the Supply Force from
Kid Butai. The five oilers concluded their refueling activities at 0307 (roughly
0507 local), and they and destroyer Akigumo departed the formation, steaming
south at twelve knots. Thereafter, Kid Butai kept ready-duty fighters on deck,
because they were now within range of American patrols. Two and a half hours
later, Akagi’s signal lamps began blinking out the following day’s strike mission
to the force, which called for Midway to be struck at dawn. At 1025 ship’s
time,51 Nagumo followed up with orders concerning the fleet’s anticipated
movements after the strike force was in the air. Shortly afterward, the force
increased speed to twenty-four knots. They would steam at high speed for the
rest of the day and through the night to close on the objective in time for the
following morning’s launch. Finally, at 1530 ship’s time, Nagumo blinkered
detailed signals to the fleet regarding the search activities to be undertaken on 5
June.
The reconnaissance program as conceived by Commander Genda was
simple and direct. Seven aircraft would fly a series of spoke-shaped searches out
from the fleet, principally on the exposed eastern and southern flanks. The No. 1
and No. 2 search lines (being 181 and 154 degrees) were to be flown by torpedo
aircraft from Akagi and Kaga, respectively. Heavy cruiser Tone’s aircraft were
tasked with searching down lines No. 3 and No. 4 (123 and 100 degrees). To do
this, she would use two E13A1 Type 0 reconnaissance seaplanes. In addition,
she would contribute an E8N2 Type 95 to the task force’s antisubmarine patrol.
Chikuma would do likewise with one of her Type 95s and use two more Type 0s
to search lines No. 5 and No. 6 (77 and 54 degrees, respectively). Line No. 7 (31
degrees) would be run by a Type 95 seaplane from Haruna. Each of the recon
planes except Haruna’s was assigned to fly their line for 300 miles before
making a port turn for sixty miles. At the completion of the dogleg, each plane
would return to the task force. Haruna’s Type 95 seaplane would only search out
for 150 miles before making its 40-mile dogleg and then homing.
The primary criticism leveled against Genda’s search plan–that it was more
of a rubber stamp than an honest attempt to assess if an enemy was truly at
hand–is certainly warranted. This is a point that has been hammered home in
every Western book on the battle, though it was first brought to light by Fuchida.
His views on the topic are worth stating at length, since they comprise the bulk
of an argument that has been picked up on by historians ever since:

Although the coverage appeared adequate, I still felt that a two-phase

search would have been wiser. A single-phase search might be sufficient if
we wished only to confirm our assumption that no enemy fleet was in the
vicinity. However, if we recognized the possibility that this assumption
might be wrong and that an enemy force might be present, our searches
should have been such as to assure that we could locate and attack it before
it could strike at us. For this purpose a two-phase dawn search was the
logical answer.
As the term indicates, a two-phase search employs two sets of planes
which fly the same search lines, with a given time interval between them.
Since our planes were not equipped with radar at this time, they were
completely reliant on visual observation and could search effectively only
by daylight. Consequently, to spot an enemy force as soon as possible after
dawn, it was necessary to have one set of planes, (the first phase) launched
in time to reach the end of their search radius as day was breaking. This
meant that the areas traversed in darkness on their outbound flight remained
unsearched. Hence a second-phase search was required over these same
lines by planes taking off about one hour later.
Men assigned to the first phase of such a search obviously had to be
 well trained in night flying. Nagumo had such pilots and could have used
this method, but it would have required twice as many planes as a single-
phase search. Despite the importance of conducting adequate searches, our
naval strategists were congenitally reluctant to devote more than a bare
minimum of their limited plane strength to such missions. Ten percent of
total strength was all they were willing to spare for search operations,
feeling that the rest should be reserved for offensive use. But such
overemphasis on offensive strength had proven detrimental to our purposes
before this, and it would again.
Naturally enough, Admiral Nagumo was eager to devote maximum
strength to the Midway attack and did not want to use any more planes for
search than seemed absolutely necessary. Since he had no reason to suspect
that presence of an enemy force in the area, he was satisfied that a single-
phase search was adequate precaution against the unexpected.52

Fuchida’s diagnosis of the problem is largely correct, but his prescription–a

two-phase search–is based completely on hindsight derived from later war
experience. In fact, at this stage in the conflict, a two-phase search was totally
unknown, and single-phase searches were the only kind of search plans there
were.53 It would not be until May 1943 that Combined Fleet would formally
incorporate two-phase searches into its doctrine, largely as the result of lessons
learned at Midway and in the Solomon Islands.54 For Fuchida to assign blame to
Nagumo and Genda for somehow failing to apprehend an (ostensibly) obvious
solution that was not even a part of contemporary Japanese naval doctrine is
clearly unfair.
A truly honest assessment of the Japanese reconnaissance plan must begin
by discarding this non sequitur and analyzing what could reasonably be
accomplished within the framework of the doctrine, search assets, and
meteorological conditions that pertained on 5/4 June 1942. Fuchida is correct in
pointing out that Japanese carrier doctrine, like their naval doctrine as a whole,
was almost purely offensive minded. Any reduction of the carrier attack
squadrons to perform scouting missions was ipso facto looked upon as
something of a waste. As such, Japanese carriers had no formally established
search units on board. Conversely, of course, the Japanese clearly needed to
make sure that their offensive firepower was being fully employed against the
right targets, thereby making sound scouting essential to the success of the
operation.
On the face of it, it would appear that the reconnaissance effort could have
been undertaken without the carriers’ help. After all, battleships Haruna and
Kirishima, heavy cruisers Tone and Chikuma, and the light cruiser Nagara all
carried reconnaissance floatplanes. In fact, the Japanese had developed heavy
cruisers like Tone and Chikuma precisely for the purpose of off-loading scouting
duties from the carriers. Unfortunately, the majority of the floatplanes in the fleet
were actually ill-suited for long-range reconnaissance. Tone and Chikuma
nominally carried five aircraft apiece–three Type 0 floatplanes and two Type 95.
The two battleships of BatDiv 3 were equipped with three Type 95s as well.
Nagara, in her role as a destroyer flotilla flagship, was most likely carrying one
of the rather rare Aichi E11A1 night reconnaissance seaplanes.55 Unfortunately,
whereas the newer Type 0 floatplanes had a range of over 1,100 miles, the Type
95 was limited to 485. Developed in the mid-1930s, it was really more of a
spotting plane–used for correcting the fall of shot from a battleship or heavy
cruiser–than a true search aircraft. At the time it was designed, carrier-borne
aircraft barely had the ability to strike over the horizon. Now, they could attack
from more than 200 miles away. The Type 95 simply did not have the range
necessary to detect enemies before they were within striking distance. Similarly,
Nagara’s plane was intended for night work and wouldn’t have been used during
the day in any case. Thus, the Type 0 floatplanes were the only decent
reconnaissance floatplanes in the fleet, and only five of these appear to have
been available.56 If carrier aircraft weren’t used, Nagumo’s scouting assets were
slim indeed.

6-5: Schematic of weather conditions pertaining 0100 June 5/June 4. This
diagram shows the relative positions of Kid Butai and the American striking
force in the vicinity of Midway. (Source: U.S. Naval War College Analysis of
the Battle of Midway, p. 84, plate 11)

The other factor to consider was the weather and the size of the battle area.
If a rectangle were laid over the extremes of the Japanese search plan, it would
cover more than 176,000 square miles, an area larger than Sweden. The weather
conditions would not be uniform across this space, meaning that each aircraft’s
sighting range would vary. Come the morrow, Kid Butai would be trailing just
behind the leading edge of a strong cold front moving down from the northwest.
The front would be demarcated by lines of cumulous clouds, squalls and
showers. The heavy weather and fog that Nagumo’s force had plowed through
on the 2nd and 3rd was now behind them, but it was also continuing to follow
them down from the northwest. The weather to their north and northeast was
therefore likely to be poor for scouting. Furthermore, as the front moved down, it
was pushing scattered clouds into the area in a broad east-west band that would
gird the middle of the battlefield, making scouting to the east more challenging
as well. Only to the south was the weather likely to open up a bit.
At Kid Butai’s launch position, the conditions were a mixed bag. Behind
the front, they would be sailing beneath bands of broken clouds, with ceilings of
between 1,000 and 3,000 feet. This offered the force excellent concealment.
However, as events would prove, more clouds than sky would be visible, making
detection of incoming aircraft more difficult.
Before the days of radar, scout aircraft (on both sides) flew at relatively low
altitudes, typically between 1,000 and 1,500 feet. There were several reasons for
this.57 First, it was difficult to spot submarines at higher altitudes, and spotting
submarines was an important part of any scout’s job. Second, staying low gave
the scout a better chance to evade hostile aircraft, because it could dive for the
deck and thereby avoid being attacked from below. Third, and most important,
scouting at low altitude allowed the horizon to be used as a mechanism for
scanning for ship profiles. In fact, flying at high altitude was often
counterproductive for spotting ships below if patchy cloud conditions were
prevalent. Whereas breaks in the clouds allowed good visibility directly under
the aircraft, those gaps disappeared toward the horizon as the angle of view from
the aircraft became shallower, making even patchy cloud cover appear to be an
unbroken blanket at longer ranges.58 The end result was that scout aircraft had
visual ranges that were relatively limited to begin with because of their altitude
and that could be impacted significantly by local weather conditions.
With the above in mind, it is clear that Genda’s plan suffered from a
twofold failure. The first had nothing to do with the hypothetical phasing of the
search. Rather, it was the sheer number of aircraft being devoted to the initial
sweep. Put simply, seven planes could not reconnoiter an area the size of
Sweden. By way of comparison, the U.S. Navy was not only planning on
devoting the thirty-one PBYs based at Midway for scouting duties, but could call
on three squadrons of armed Dauntless divebombers (fifty-six aircraft in all)
from their carriers in an armed scout role as well.59 The PBYs by themselves
would outnumber Japanese scout aircraft by more than four to one.
Genda wrote postwar that “it has to be admitted that the planning of the air
searching was slipshod.”60 Although the plan was a repeat of the search missions
used at Pearl Harbor and Indian Ocean, Genda went on to elaborate that this plan
“involved a defect of leaving an uncovered space in the search area, especially
when an enemy force moved across or slant-wise of the planned search arc. The
search plan should have been made more mathematically and precisely.”61
Genda might have also added the word “flexibly” to his list of desirable
attributes. Mathematically precise or not, the search scheme was completely
divorced from the realities of the weather conditions that would likely pertain on
5 June. Having just traversed a front of very bad weather, it should have been
apparent to Nagumo’s staff that more aircraft would be needed. When the likely
spotting ranges of the Japanese aircraft are superimposed over the tracks that
they (nominally) flew, the basic problem is immediately apparent–there were
serious gaps in the coverage. As such, it might have been wise to hold a few
aircraft in reserve to blanket those vectors with lower visibility conditions.
The success of Genda’s plan depended on having decent weather
everywhere, alert crews, and nearly perfect timing on the part of all the planes
involved to ensure that their very tightly defined routes were adequately
reconnoitered. If these arrangements were thrown off in any way, then detection
of the enemy might be tardy. Genda, better than anyone in the fleet, had a sense
for what Kid Butai’s operational cycles were like. As events were to prove, the
First Carrier Striking Force possessed many laudable military assets, but
operational flexibility did not figure prominently in its portfolio of strengths.
Genda should have had a sense that, faced with a suddenly emerging threat, the
Japanese carrier force would not be able to simply drop what it was doing and
turn to face the new opponent, particularly if it was already heavily engaged
against Midway. It was absolutely critical to ensure that the force had the time
necessary to react.

6-6: Kid Butai’s planned single phase search pattern with nominal twenty-five-
mile search ranges superimposed. (Adapted from Senshi S sho, p. 286)

If that meant making a down payment of striking power, and devoting

Kaga’s extra ch tai of nine Type 97 kank to the problem of covering the
eastern flank of the force, then so be it. Even an extra three aircraft on that flank
could have changed the aspect of Genda’s search from Swiss cheese to at least a
medium cheddar. But Genda didn’t think he’d need these extra aircraft. Instead,
he opted to cut his scouting margin to nothing and reserve as much offensive
firepower as he could. Here is where the false economy of Genda’s plan is made
clear. By not being willing to sacrifice a fairly marginal number of aircraft for
scouting duties, Genda had implicitly forfeited the fleet’s ability to buy time for
itself.
As for the dawn strike against Midway itself, it was to take off at 0430 and
comprise 108 aircraft total. CarDiv 2 would contribute its entire contingent of
thirty-six Type 97s acting as level bombers. These planes would lead the attack
from the east and thereby gaining the advantage of having the sun at their backs.
Hiry ’s aircraft were tasked with bombing Sand Island’s facilities; S ry ’s
would attend to Eastern Island and its airfield. Once the initial wave of high-
level attacks was concluded, the divebombers would move in. CarDiv 1 would
contribute thirty-six bombers from both of its flight decks. Akagi’s eighteen were
slated to attack Eastern Island, with Kaga’s hitting Sand Island. The remainder
of the attack force, a strong contingent of thirty-six Zero fighters, had a twofold
mission. The first, obviously, was to safely shepherd the attack aircraft to the
target and destroy or disperse any enemy fighters that got in the way. Then,
having achieved air superiority over the objective, the Zeros would strafe any
enemy aircraft on the ground.
On the face of it, this was a fairly powerful strike force, but, in fact, it was
marginal to the task at hand. Midway, for all its diminutive size, actually
possessed an aircraft contingent nearly as large as the attacking Japanese force.
Not only that, but its base facilities were strongly defended. The thirty-six Zeros
in the fighter escort could provide little in the way of real offensive firepower to
neutralize these objectives, meaning that the four attack units would have to take
them all out. Seventy-two aircraft were simply insufficient to accomplish this in
the course of a single strike. High-level bombing was not all that accurate an
attack technique. It was performed by six-plane ch tai flying in formation and
dropping together on command, the basic rationale being that if one dropped six
large bombs on something fairly large itself, perhaps one or two might actually
do some damage. For this reason, level bombing was used against large targets
such as runways or shore installations. This left just thirty-six divebombers to
get at the meat of the matter–the antiaircraft defenses, command and control
installations, and other hardened targets that composed the guts of Midway’s
defenses. Clearly, thirty-six medium-sized bombs weren’t going to get the job
done. It was almost guaranteed that a second strike would be needed to degrade
the atoll’s ability to defend itself.
In fact, all indications are that Nagumo’s staff fully expected a second
strike to be required. This had become something of a de facto pattern of the
Striking Force over the last several months. The operations in the Indian Ocean
had been executed in a similar fashion–an initial strike launched, with a reserve
force held in readiness, followed by the rearming of the reserves for land attack
in a subsequent wave. The fact that a second strike would be required wasn’t a
problem in and of itself, but it pointed to a lack of offensive firepower on the
part of the force as a whole. If there were American carriers nearby, Kid Butai
didn’t really have sufficient firepower to deal with both threats in a timely
manner. This indicates a fundamental misapprehension on the part of Combined
Fleet’s staff of the type of operation it was actually undertaking. They were
treating the operation like a raid, à la the attacks made thus far on Pearl Harbor,
Port Darwin, Colombo, and Trincomalee. But Midway wasn’t a raid; it was an
invasion. And conducting a proper invasion carried with it an implicit
commitment to sustainable action in the face of the enemy. Kid Butai was short
on staying power in several key dimensions–logistical support, heavy gun power
(if it got involved in a surface action), and particularly numbers of aircraft.
Given that a second strike would most likely be required, the question
remained as to which aircraft would undertake the action. It will be recalled that
during the May war games, Yamamoto had issued verbal orders to First Air
Fleet staff to maintain at least half of the striking power of the fleet armed for
antiship missions. However, it is unclear from the record as to what exact time
frame or contingencies the orders pertained. How, and when, were these reserve
aircraft to be used in the (likely) eventuality that there were no American fleet
units present next morning? Was it truly Yamamoto’s intent to permanently
divide Nagumo’s operational aircraft into two halves–a ground-attack half and
an antiship half? Or were his orders merely given to remind Nagumo that the
threat of American naval resistance was not to be underestimated? What, really,
were his priorities–attacking Midway, or attacking warships should he encounter
them? In the lack of written orders, it is impossible to know, although common
sense would dictate that any enemy naval force had to be given priority. The
overall effect of Yamamoto’s instruction, though, was to add another element of
inflexibility and uncertainty into the following day’s operations.
By the time Nagumo issued his morning’s orders, it is likely that he (like
the Main Body steaming behind him) had received news of Tanaka’s being
discovered and then attacked. Admiral Kusaka later stated that they received the
communiqué.62 This was yet another clue that the enemy was fully alerted to the
impending Japanese operation. But still nothing was done to alter the
instructions just issued to Kid Butai regarding the coming operations.
As the day crept toward evening, the level of tension began ratcheting up a
notch. At 1630 cruiser Tone opened fire with her main battery in the direction of
what appeared to her to be multiple enemy aircraft bearing almost due south. A
sh tai of fighters took off from Akagi a minute later but found nothing. At 1640
a chagrined Tone reported that it had lost track of the enemy aircraft. Skepticism
reigned on Akagi’s bridge–everyone was simply getting a little edgier as the
morning of battle drew closer.
The men went to General Quarters a half hour after nightfall to change over
to nighttime steaming formation.63 The fleet loosened its columns and moved
the carriers into a box. Meanwhile, Haruna moved to the fore, so as to have
some heavy gun power in the van in the event of an unexpected night fight.
Around midnight, shadowy American aircraft would twice be reported by
Akagi’s jumpy lookouts. Belowdecks, the majority of the crews had long since
gone to bed–adequate sleep time was enforced after lights out.64 Everyone, from
Nagumo down to the lowliest crewman, knew that tomorrow would be busy.

The final act of the evening played out far to the south, where Tanaka’s Invasion
Force had its own encounters with shadowy enemy aircraft that turned out to be
all too real. Determined to get another blow in against the Japanese as soon as
possible, the American air commander, Captain Simard, had ordered four radar-
equipped Catalinas sent out for a night torpedo attack. Dropping torpedoes was
hardly stock in trade for PBYs at this point in the war, but the crews were game
for giving it a try. One of the aircraft ran into bad weather and was forced to turn
back, but the remaining trio made it to the Japanese convoy by about 0130.
Tanaka’s charges were plodding ahead in two columns surrounded by the screen.
None of the ships were taking evasive maneuvers, and all were neatly
silhouetted by the moon as the Americans attacked sequentially from out of the
gloomy northeast.
The Japanese were caught flat-footed and were slow to react with either
helm or antiaircraft fire, although the latter strengthened noticeably as the attack
continued. Two of the PBYs missed, but the third plane–piloted by Ensign
Gaylord D. Propst–managed to put a torpedo into the port bow of the oiler
Akebono Maru at 0154 (local), killing or wounding twenty-three men. Propst
didn’t know it, but his jury-rigged Catalina had just pulled off the only
successful American torpedo attack–aerial or submarine–of the entire battle.
Akebono Maru, though damaged, shortly rejoined formation and continued on.
That ended the night’s excitement for Tanaka. Within an hour, the Nagumo force
would begin rousing from its slumber to begin preparations for the coming
dawn.
 PART II

Battle Diary

Morning Attack––0430–0600

Thursday, June 5/41 began with Dai-ichi Kid Butai doing what it had been
doing regularly since the start of the Pacific war–arming, fueling, lifting, and
positioning (spotting) its aircraft for a strike. The outcome of these tasks–putting
planes in the air–is so familiar to any reader of World War II naval history that
the precursors are largely taken for granted. This is what carriers are meant to
do, after all–launch and recover aircraft. Yet sixty years of separation have left
the details of exactly how the Japanese operated their carriers so poorly
understood that the way they actually fought is no longer entirely understood
either. As a result, historians have been in the unenviable position of trying to
analyze the Japanese circumstances on 4 June in terms of analogs based on
Western practice. In fact, Japanese carriers did things their own way, which is
crucial to understanding how Kid Butai fought and died this day.
To be ready for takeoff at 0430, the day’s work had to begin well before
dawn.2 It would involve the prodigious labor of thousands of well-trained
crewmen, the majority of whom were not aviators. Indeed, the pilots were still
sleeping at around 0230 when the order “Seibiin-okoshi (Wake up the crew)”
was issued for the aircraft mechanics.3 Stumbling out of their hammocks and
narrow bunks deep in the crew spaces, they dressed, stowed their bedding,
breakfasted quickly, and then made their way to the hangars. Many of the men,
not having had a change of uniform in some while (again, because of freshwater
concerns), changed into fresh clothes, believing that the code of chivalry
required clean clothing for combat.4 Some of the officers were dressed in blue
winter uniforms (Admiral Ugaki had postponed the normal June 1st switch to
summer uniforms until “further notice”).5 Many of the crewmen, however, were
likely in uniform whites or in the cooler “South Seas uniform” of khaki shorts,
shirts (or sometimes just their white undershirts), and floppy hats beloved by
Japanese sailors. It wasn’t hot now, but they knew it would be later, and there
wouldn’t be an opportunity to change again during the day’s duties.
The aircraft–dark green, buff and black–sat in the harsh electric glare of the
hangars. Some of them sported elaborate camouflage patterns or the bright
horizontal tail bands indicating sh tai and ch tai leaders. Many of these aircraft
were veterans of the Pearl Harbor attack, not to mention the other strikes that
Kid Butai had launched across half the breadth of the Pacific. Not surprisingly,
some of them were beginning to display the weather-beaten look seemingly
universal among well-used naval aircraft of all nations–worn and chipped paint,
dripping hydraulics, and a certain level of idiosyncratic crankiness that persisted
in spite of the care they were given. All were now empty–unarmed and unfueled.

7-1: Typical hangar deck interior. The extremely tight packing of the ship’s
aircraft can be seen, along with the complexity of equipment to be found on the
hangar.

There were more than sixteen hundred mechanics on board Nagumo’s four
carriers. These men, like the pilots of Kid Butai, were among the very best
practitioners of their craft in the world. They had worked together for years and
were intimately familiar with their charges. Unlike America, where almost every
young man had at least a passing acquaintance with internal combustion engines,
Japan was far less industrially developed. In 1940 Japan manufactured only one-
eightieth the number of automobiles that were produced in the United States.6
Agriculture was still largely performed by hand. As a result, Japanese mechanics
did not grow on trees. These men, whether they had been plucked from the inaka
(“the sticks”) or had grown up in the teeming coastal cities, had been trained
from the ground up over the course of years.
Each mechanic was assigned to a specific plane, just as in the USN, and
labored under the watchful eye of the plane’s maintenance petty officer (seibich
). Unlike American carriers, the Japanese normally did not stow their aircraft on
the flight deck in a deck park when not in use.7 Instead, the hangars were always
stuffed. The aircraft were crammed in practically touching each other, with each
plane’s location in the hangar indicated by symbols painted on the deck. Each
was secured by tether wires to tie-down points arranged in a 1.5-meter grid
across the deck.8 Chocks were also placed under the wheels. The hangars
smelled strongly of the exotic mix of grease, oil, paint, and all the chemicals and
lubricants that go along with the operation of aircraft. No amount of white-
gloved fastidiousness was sufficient to remove the odor.
On board CarDiv 2, the division’s attack planes needed to be fueled and
armed before being moved topside. The crewmen began unrolling metal hoses to
the aircraft and pumping fuel into them. Along the hangar walls, a seventy-three-
gallon drop tank for each Zero was unfastened from brackets on the bulkheads,
attached, and then fueled. Each plane required between 180 and 235 gallons of
fuel, and gassing the aircraft (as well as the Zero’s drop tanks) took several
minutes apiece. Unlike American carriers, the Japanese hangars were entirely
enclosed from the elements. As fueling continued, the faintest hint of aviation
gasoline could be detected, mingling with the predominant aroma of paint and
motor oils. Overhead, on the port side of the hangar spaces, ventilation systems
noisily blew new air in, while the starboard-side vents mounted at deck level
labored to suck the noxious fumes away.
Simultaneously, armorers were beginning the arduous task of affixing their
deadly wares to the attack aircraft. For the initial attack against Midway, CarDiv
2’s planes would be armed with Type 80 800-kg land-attack bombs. Deep below
the waterline, in the bomb storage rooms of Hiry and S ry , the men used
overhead block and tackle to wrestle the gray-painted weapons onto the lifts that
carried them up to the hangars. The bomb lifts terminated on a platform set a
meter above deck level. This arrangement prevented deck-hugging gasoline
vapors from seeping down the lift shafts and into the magazines. The platform
also provided a more convenient means for loading the weapons onto the carts
that would carry them to the waiting planes.
Each aircraft carrier was equipped with special carts for moving ordnance
around. One variety was used for the 242-kg and 250-kg bombs that were carried
by the dive-bombers. A second, much heavier cart was used to carry both the
Type 80 bombs, as well as the 850-kg weight of the Type 91 Mod. 3 torpedoes.
Typically, each carrier had enough ordnance carts to rearm one-third of their
respective hik tai at a time, meaning six carts for each type of ordnance (and
nine for the twenty-seven-strong wing of torpedo bombers on board Kaga).
One by one, the nine-foot-long weapons came up the bomb lift. One by one,
they were secured to overhead tackle and deposited on the waiting bomb carts.
Then Hiry and S ry ’s men rolled their three-ton packages of cart and bomb
from the loading platform to their assigned planes, wending their way through
the jammed hangars. Once there, they began the five-minute process of hoisting
the heavy weapon up into place and securing it to the plane’s curved ordnance
holding brackets (tokaki).9 Each Type 97 had a hand crank in its starboard wheel
well for the plane’s ordnance winch. In conjunction with the jacks on the carts,
this equipment was used to lift the bomb into the tokaki. Once in place, a
carrying harness was attached to the weapon, along with the release and safety
wire mechanisms. Next, the bomb’s nose and tail fuses were set by an armorer.
The weapon was now live, although it couldn’t detonate until the tiny fuse
propellers had rotated a certain number of times during the weapon’s free fall
after release. At the completion of this exercise, the arming crews pushed their
carts back to the ordnance lift to get another bomb. Three times they repeated
this process before the bombers were ready to be taken up to the deck. They
probably started doing this sometime after 0330.
The Zeros were being armed as well. Belts of 7.7-mm ammunition were fed
into each pair of nose-mounted machine guns, while sixty-round canisters were
crammed into the wing spaces for the two 20-mm cannons. Additional boxes of
ammunition were set out for the day’s combat air patrol fighters–there would be
many sorties this morning, and each of them would need to be refueled and
rearmed as soon as they returned to the mother ship.
Meanwhile, on Akagi and Kaga, the process had gone somewhat
differently. Unlike torpedo bombers, dive-bombers were normally armed on the
flight deck.10 The spotting process thus started immediately after the aircraft
were fueled. Of all the Japanese carrier planes at Midway, the Type 99 dive-
bomber was undoubtedly the most difficult to deal with belowdecks. A large,
powerful airplane, it had to be robust enough to survive the harrowing near-
vertical dives and gut-wrenching pullouts that were the trademark of expert
pilots. Because of the placement of the Type 99’s control surfaces and dive
brakes, not to mention its need for structural strength, Aichi’s designers had
decided not to place a folding mechanism too near the center of the wing.
Instead, the Type 99’s wings folded very near the tips, making it difficult to
stow, tricky to maneuver through tight spaces, and a hog of precious parking
“real estate.”11 The large fixed wingspan also meant that the Type 99 was too
big to fit on the diminutive aft elevators of Akagi, Kaga, and S ry . As a result,
dive-bombers were stowed amidships, closer to the larger elevator there. The
Type 97 torpedo bombers, although about the same size and weight as the dive-
bombers, had wings that folded much more compactly, allowing them to use the
smaller elevators on the carriers, and so were stowed at the aft end of the ship.
Zeros were stowed forward.
Spotting a strike for launch was a complex operation, requiring both hard
physical labor and quite a bit of precision.12 Each aircraft had to be individually
extracted from the hangars. There wasn’t a lot of room to work. The first step
was for the crewmen to untether the aircraft and remove its wheel chocks. Then
each fully armed and fueled plane, in some cases weighing more than four tons,
was pushed through the hangar deck and onto an elevator. A team of a dozen or
more plane handlers was required to move each aircraft. The trip to the elevator
could be several hundred feet in length if the plane had been stowed in the
middle of the deck. In the heat of the hangar, such extended pushes were
exhausting.
When the time came, each plane was shoved onto the elevator as quickly as
possible. For the Type 99s, this had to be done very precisely, as they only
barely fit on even the larger elevators. During this process, the crew chief
intoned the proper commands to ensure the exact positioning of the
aircraft–“Mgimae-e (Forward right),” “Hidarimae-e (Forward left),” “Y sor !
(Hold steady!).” The crew then rode on the elevator together with their plane up
to the flight deck to complete topside preparations.
Elevator cycle times were crucial to the efficiency of the entire operation,
because elevator moves had to be performed sequentially. The problem was
aggravated by the Japanese use of dual hangars (one atop the other),
necessitating a trip of thirty-plus feet (equivalent to a three-story building) each
way when lifting an aircraft from the lower hangar deck. Even on the newer
carriers like Sh kaku, a round-trip to this deck could take as much as forty
seconds,13 including the time necessary to muscle the plane on and off the
elevator. On the older Akagi and Kaga, whose elevators were slower, the cycles
were even longer.14
Often, if space was sufficient, the plane’s wings were manually unfolded by
the pusher team while still on the elevator.15 Once the plane reached the flight
deck, it was rolled by the crew into its place in the spot.16 This again
necessitated pushing a multiton aircraft over a considerable distance. Once the
aircraft was in position, the wheels were chocked, and the wings retethered. The
planes were arranged in three staggered columns down the length of the flight
deck, with the bombers in the rear and the fighters in front. The lead fighter was
roughly abreast Akagi’s bridge.
Had the plane pushers been aware of what was going on around them, they
would have seen that Kid Butai’s nighttime cruising formation was changing
for conducting flight operations. At the head of CarDiv 2, Hiry was edging off
to port. The rearmost ships, Kaga and S ry , were peeling out of formation to
starboard and port, respectively, to open the distance between their divisional
mates. Kid Butai’s formation was becoming a much looser square, with as
much as 8,000 meters between the carriers. The evidence suggests that BatDiv 3
formed in column abreast the port flank of the box, while CruDiv 8 did the same
to starboard. Nagara remained in the van, and the destroyers spread out as far as
20,000 meters from the carriers. BatDiv 3 and CruDiv 8 were themselves as
much as 8,000 to 10,000 meters abeam the carriers. For this reason the ships of
CruDiv 8, as we shall see, were almost always the first main units to sight
approaching enemy aircraft.17

7-2: Kid Butai’s formation, 0430. The fleet’s carriers operated in a fairly
dispersed manner, allowing free operations and ease of maneuver, while still
retaining the ability to easily mass the fleet’s offensive airpower.

Around the flight deck, the ship’s radio aerials were being winched down
from their vertical positions into the horizontal mode used during flight
operations. These forty-foot masts normally towered over the deck, but they
were set on a rotating base that allowed them to be rigged outboard over the
water, so as not to impede landing operations. In the adjacent gun tubs, the
antiaircraft crews were being assembled and were checking their weapons and
ammunition in anticipation of a busy day. All around the deck the mood was one
of bustling optimism.
The weather, which had been bad the night before, was still rather dreary.
The sea was somewhat rough, and low broken cumulus clouds scudded over the
force at between 2,000 and 5,000 feet.18 The Nagumo force had emerged from
the front of the storm system that had bedeviled it previously, and the weather
promised to improve the farther south the fleet traveled. However, the broken
cloud cover was at best a mixed blessing, because it could conceal the lurking
enemy aircraft as well as the fleet.19
With the carriers done maneuvering, their designated plane guard
destroyers took up their stations. Akagi’s bridge crew watched as Nowaki edged
into a spot some 700 meters ahead and slightly to starboard of Akagi’s bow. She
was now in position to perform tonbo-tsuri (“dragonfly-fishing”)–the rescue of
crewmen from any aircraft that suffered a mishap during takeoff.
On Akagi and Kaga’s flight decks, the dive-bombers were now in place and
being armed from carts. For the morning strike, each would carry a 242-kg Type
98 No. 25 bomb. These high-explosive weapons were designed for use against
land targets. Kaga had a bomb lift next to the midships elevator forward that ran
all the way to the flight deck, so she loaded her bomb carts on deck. Akagi,
whose bomb lift terminated on the lower hangar deck forward, was forced to
load her carts belowdecks and then bring them to the flight deck using the
forward aircraft elevator. As with the torpedo planes below, this was
accomplished in shifts of six planes at a time.
It was now 0400. Over the carrier intercoms, a trumpet blared, calling the
crew to general quarters. Looking out over the water, Akagi’s deckhands and
gunners could barely make out the outlines of the other three carriers in the
gloom, but they blinkered their progress to the flagship at intermittent intervals.
Even before arming of the dive-bombers was complete, the task of warming up
aircraft engines began.20 Because of their internal hangars and lack of natural
ventilation, Japanese carriers had no choice but to warm their planes up on the
flight deck.21 This was not an exercise that could be slighted. Radial aircraft
engines were complicated, powerful, and built to very tight tolerances. Takeoff
required the application of full military power, which placed a great strain on a
plane’s power plant. Engine failures routinely caused aircraft to abort their
missions and either crash or return to base. It was imperative to detect and
prevent as many engineering-related aircraft scratches as possible while still on
the deck of the carrier, rather than risking the plane and its crew with a hasty
takeoff.
 On each plane, a deck crewman scrambled into the light gray-green cockpit,
while another of the deck crew waited at the right side of the engine. Clustered
around the plane were damage control personnel with fire extinguishers. On
signal, the crewman below cranked the engine with a hand crank. The engine’s
internal flywheel began groaning and gaining speed. The cockpit man shouted
“Mae-hanare! (Get away from the front!),” and his crewmate retreated from the
danger zone of the propeller. With another shout of “Kontaaku! (Contact!),” he
engaged the prop with the flywheel. Upon startup, a special mixture of 91-octane
starter fuel was fed to the engine to initiate combustion. Coughing white smoke,
the strike force’s engines roared one by one to life.
For several minutes the power plant was idled at between 1,000 and 1,500
RPM, as hydraulic pressure, oil pressure, fuel pressure, and temperature built up
to proper levels. Establishing nominal oil pressure was critical. When a radial
engine was shut down, oil tended to collect in the lower cylinders, leaving the
upper cylinders “dry” when the engine was restarted. A proper warm-up was
necessary to ensure that oil was flowing correctly to the upper cylinders before
full power was applied. During this process, the magnetos (right and left) were
switched back and forth and the propeller pitch control moved from low (fully
feathered) to high (“full increase RPM”). The fuel mixture control was run from
lean to rich and back again.
When the temperatures and pressures were within proper ranges, the engine
would be opened up fully. With the engine at maximum manifold pressure,
RPM, and full rich fuel mixture the gauges were monitored for at least a minute.
On land this required real physical leg strength to accomplish, as the brakes had
to be held firmly to keep the plane from moving. On the flight deck, of course,
the wheels were still chocked. If the final full power check was done before the
engine was properly warmed up, it could blow the engine outright. During this
time the radios and surface controls (rudder, ailerons, horizontal stabilizer, and
flaps) were also checked. The whole process took no less than fifteen minutes
and might take more if the air or engine was particularly cold. Only now was the
aircraft finally ready for the rigors of takeoff.
During engine warm-up, the flight crews finally made their appearance.
Rousted out of bed at around 0245, they had proceeded to their briefing room (t
j in taikisho).22 There, the men had received their breakfasts from the stewards
and consumed it in their seats. The loudspeakers in the ready room blared “T J
In seiretsu! (Airmen line up!),” and the men began climbing the companionway
up to the flight deck. Garbed in their heavy brown cotton flight suits and
helmets, they emerged into the morning air. They were already sweating. The
aviators then crowded round the large blackboards attached to the side of the
islands.
At around the same time, Commander Fuchida, Akagi’s air group leader,
decided that he could no longer lie abed in the sick bay, where he was still
recovering from his appendectomy. Rising painfully to his feet, he began picking
his way through the gray-painted maze that was Akagi. The ship was now in
watertight condition, and he had to undog numerous hatches as he made his way,
sometimes crawling, through the vessel. The process left him exhausted and
shaking by the time he finally reached the bridge.
Shortly after Fuchida’s arrival, Commander Genda, who had come down
with a virus in the last few days, also appeared. Visibly ill, he clambered
painfully up the ladders from the air platform.23 Nagumo was particularly
touched to see his staff air officer, still dressed in his pajamas, as he entered the
tiny command space. Putting his arm around Genda, Nagumo made small talk
with him as the bustle of launch operations continued below on the flight deck.
On board each carrier, the air groups were now being briefed by their
respective hik ch . The weather was expected to be moderate, with broken
cloud cover that should not impede the planned attack sequence. It was known
that Midway hosted a formidable air group. But it was expected that the strike
force’s thirty-six-plane-strong fighter escort would sweep enemy fighter
opposition aside, as they had during every other operation during the war.

7-3: Lt. Tomonaga J ichi, Hiry air group hik taich , leader of the Midway
attack force. (Naval Historical Center)

Once the attack force was launched, according to the attack plan, Nagumo’s
carriers would maintain their present course for the next three and a half hours at
a speed of twenty-four knots. Thereafter, as the wind was basically from the east,
the fleet would come to course forty-five degrees and steam at twenty knots,
allowing the attack force to home on Kid Butai and land sometime after 0830.
If these arrangements needed to be changed, a ship would be sent to the locale of
the original landing zone to redirect the aircraft.24
The conclusion of the briefing was usually an opportunity for the ship’s air
officer to issue a ringing exhortation to the men to do their best. Regardless of
the manner of delivery, the crews implicitly understood the importance of the
coming action. Each man knew the level of effort and sacrifice that was required
of him. After a pause, the hik ch barked out, “Kakare! (Get to it!).” The men
broke into a run for their planes. As they did so, the deck crewmen set the
throttles at 1,000 RPM and cleared the waiting aircraft. Simultaneously, each
carrier’s deck was illuminated in preparation for takeoff. The centerline and
edges of the flight deck were indicated by rows of specially hooded white lights
designed so that they only shone inward, not outward, where hostile eyes might
be watching. The fantail was similarly lit in red, allowing a landing aircraft to
judge where the aft end of the flight deck lay.25
In the absence of Fuchida, overall command of the morning’s attack had
fallen on Hiry ’s hik taich , Lieutenant Tomonaga Joichi. He was a handsome,
serious man with high cheekbones and forehead and piercing dark eyes.
Somewhat aloof, and known as a hard drinker, he was a recent addition to Hiry
’s air unit, although he was a veteran of the air war over China. This was,
however, his first combat sortie against the Americans. He mounted plane BI-
310, along with his observer, Lt. Hashimoto Toshio, and radioman PO1c Murai
Sadamu.26 The complete roster for the morning’s first launch was as follows:

7-4: Roster for Kid Butai’s 0430 launch against Midway.

The pilots began checking their mounts: the engine’s condition, and the
movement of the flaps, rudder, and stabilizers. One by one, each man raised his
hand, shouting “Y sor ! (OK!)” to the deck crewmen still huddled about. The
drone of the engines grew louder as throttles were boosted. The deck launching
officer (sho-hik ch ), a subordinate to the carrier’s hik ch , who was in charge
of flight deck operations, was making the rounds of the strike aircraft, checking
each individual plane to make sure that all was in readiness.
Akagi’s hik ch , Commander Masuda, watched from the air control station
on the aft portion of the island. He could see his sh -hik ch running back to the
air station, and as he did so, Masuda barked into the voice tube up to the bridge
that all was in readiness for takeoff. Akagi was steaming at battle speed 3
(twenty-two knots).27 At that moment, the wind was from 160 degrees at two
meters per second (four knots).28 One by one, in the dim light of dawn, each
carrier in the force raised her seibiki (service flag) and simultaneously signaled
to Akagi via blinker that all was in readiness. Akagi, in turn, raised signal flags
and blinkered to the force, indicating “K gekitai hasshin junbi yoshi (Attack
force ready to launch).”

7-5: A classic shot of preparations for takeoff on board Akagi, taken during the
attack on Pearl Harbor. This strike is evidently still several minutes away from
launch, judging by the large number of erect deck crewmen on the flight deck
and the fact that the aircraft wings are still tethered. The engines are in the
process of being warmed up. (Photo courtesy Michael Wenger)

At the head of Akagi’s deck spot were the nine Type 0 fighters commanded
by Lt. Shirane Ayao. The son of an important politician, Shirane had been with
Akagi since the first day of the Pacific war. Now, upon seeing the signal flags
being raised, he looked over his shoulder at the planes packed behind him. He
could see the other eight pilots in his own chutai, as well as the three combat air
patrol fighters. Right aft of them was Akagi’s full complement of Type 99
bombers, under Lt. Yamada Shohei. He could see all the pilots had their hands
raised, indicating readiness. He responded by turning on his wing lights. The
other aircraft immediately followed suit.
Akagi now signaled to the other ships “Hasshin y i (Prepare to launch).”
Some of the remaining deckhands untethered the wings of each plane and then
ran for the crew shelters, leaving a pair of crewmen under each plane, tending
the wheel chocks. Their white uniforms were buffeted in the cool, blustery
propwash, yet all the men kept their eyes on the hik ch .
Now, nearly two hours after the crew had first gotten to work, all was
finally in readiness. On Akagi’s bridge, Nagumo looked to Genda, who returned
his gaze solemnly, then nodded. This was it. Nagumo then gave the order, “K ch
 k gekitai wo hasshin seyo (Launch the air attack force),” which Genda
immediately relayed via the speaker tube to Masuda at the air station.
Simultaneously, Akagi’s signal lamps began blinking to the other ships,
instructing them to begin launching.
Masuda now ordered the steam jet at Akagi’s bow turned on to indicate the
wind direction to the pilots. From his Zero’s cockpit, Shirane could see the white
vapor streaming down the flight deck. A glance up over his left shoulder at the
wind sock flying from Akagi’s mainmast confirmed his impression. It was stiffly
aligned almost fore and aft. Akagi’s 41,000-ton bulk was charging ahead, her
massive bow kicking up sheets of white water as her engines thrummed. In the
east, the sky was beginning to lighten. It was 0426.29
On the flight deck, the sh -hik ch blew a whistle, then swung his red
lantern in a great circle. On the bridge, Masuda used a signal lamp to alert all the
planes on the deck to begin taking off. Simultaneously, another officer on the air
platform began vigorously waving a white flag toward the direction of the bow.
Having retreated to the side of the flight deck, the sh -hik ch then signaled to
the deck crewmen to remove the wheel chocks, which they did before scurrying
to the deckside shelters.
Making a last-minute check behind him again, Shirane upped his throttle
and yelled, “Ikimasu! (I’m going!).” His plane surged forward as Shirane gunned
it. Within a few meters his tail came off the deck and he charged ahead on his
main gear alone. Some eighty meters later his plane left the deck and hurtled into
the air with a growl. Along the length of the deck, the crewmen in their shelters
shouted encouragement and waved a veritable blizzard of white caps, wishing
him good luck. Unlike Western navies, once the takeoff signal was given, it was
up to the individual pilots to determine when to begin their own takeoff runs.
One by one, each of Shirane’s fighter division pilots repeated his maneuver, the
outboard planes angling in to the centerline and then gunning it down the deck.
It only took ten to fifteen seconds apiece.30 Akagi had begun launching first, at
0426. Hiry followed suit at 0428, with Kaga and S ry beginning operations at
0430.
On board Hiry , attack leader Lieutenant Tomonaga watched as her nine
escort fighters departed, led by the athletic and energetic Lt. Shigematsu
Yasuhiro. Right after them, three Zeros under Lt. Mori Shigeru, whose sh tai
was leading the morning’s first combat air patrol watch, departed with similar
alacrity. Getting Tomonaga’s kank in the air, however, was a different story
altogether. Fully loaded, his plane weighed more than four tons, almost 400
pounds more than a dive-bomber, and more than a ton heavier than a Zero. Yet
his horsepower-to-weight ratio was the lowest of the three types of carrier planes
in the fleet. In a word, the Type 97 was a pig. He would need every ounce of
power to make it off the deck.
The compound wind over Hiry ’s flight deck generally needed to be around
thirteen meters/second (twenty-six knots) to launch aircraft, but Tomonaga’s
Type 97s really were better off if the relative wind was closer to fifteen
meters/second (thirty knots). This created problems for the older Kaga, whose
top speed of twenty-eight knots (on a good day) meant that she could barely
launch her Type 97s if there was no wind. Too much wind, though, could be a
problem in itself–at speeds above twenty-five meters/second the planes were
impossible to control on the flight deck. On Hiry , creating relative wind wasn’t
an issue–Yamaguchi’s flagship had plenty of speed. But even under ideal
conditions, Tomonaga’s heavily laden bird still needed around 120 meters to
make it into the air. On the shorter flight decks of Hiry and S ry this was
problematic, particularly for the lead strike aircraft spotted at the head of the
pack.31 Tomonaga’s nose was almost atop the central elevator. From here it was
135 meters to the forward end of the flight deck–doable, but hardly
comfortable.32
Under the circumstances, the only thing Tomonaga could do was jam his
throttle all the way to the stops, pop the brakes, and hope for the best. If worse
came to worst and he went into the drink, hopefully Hiry wouldn’t run over his
plane. Then the guard destroyer would pluck him and his men to safety. He
gunned his engine. His kank began plodding down the deck, gaining speed with
agonizing slowness. He could see his plane coming up on the white-painted
wind gauge and the steam jet at the forward end of the flight deck–it was
happening all too quickly. Then, seemingly at the last second, his plane nosed up
and lifted grudgingly from Hiry ’s deck. Cheers rang out again from the crew
galleries. Tomonaga immediately began circling to port, putting his plane into a
waiting pattern as the rest of his squadron took off. One by one, Hiry ’s Kank
tai, clutching their deadly cargoes to their bellies like great, green dragons,
lumbered into the air. Across the water, the other carriers were doing the same–
sending their heavy attack planes up into the growing light. The last to leave the
decks were a Type 97 kank apiece from Kaga and Akagi. These two planes
were slated to join the search missions that were already getting under way from
the cruisers and battleships. The carriers completed launching their aircraft
within about seven minutes.
Climbing upward, the various unit commanders gathered their forces
together, merging them into a cohesive whole. Meanwhile, the patrol fighters
and recon flights headed off to their respective tasks alone or in small groups. At
0445 the strike force turned as one and headed southeast toward Midway at 125
knots–108 aircraft all told. Had the Americans been able to observe this
spectacle, they might well have been envious of the prowess of their foes. At this
point in the war, the U.S. Navy still struggled to mount a coordinated attack
from a single flight deck, as the events of this day would soon demonstrate. The
Japanese, by contrast, were able to launch and assemble a synchronized strike
from as many as six carriers as a matter of course. They thought nothing of
creating combat units assembled from physical elements of several carriers–an
escort fighter group from all four carriers led by Kaga’s senior fighter
commander, a combined-arms attack force (level and dive-bombers) led by
Tomonaga. It was a testament to the skill and training of the Japanese that they
could accomplish such an impressive feat of arms.
Nagumo stood watching his attack force depart. Once they were out of
visual sight of the task force, they would be completely beyond his control.
Radio silence would be maintained until the attack against Midway had actually
been carried out and the flight leader’s radioman had the chance to tap out a
brief preliminary report on his radiotelegraph. Nagumo wouldn’t really know the
particulars of the strike results until Tomonaga and the others landed and were
debriefed. Until then, his intelligence on the state of Midway would remain
spotty. Such were the vagaries of command on board a 1940s carrier–the strike
force, once launched, was on its own, and so, too, was Nagumo.
Overhead, the combat air patrol (CAP) of eleven fighters were fanning out
to cover the fleet. Each sh tai took a different quadrant of the sky; two sh tai at
2,000 meters, the other two at 4,000.33 All in all, this was a fairly skimpy force
to protect a fleet as large as Nagumo’s. Yet Commander Masuda was already
preparing Akagi’s next deck spot. This time around it wouldn’t be attack planes,
but fighters. They would be needed for patrol operations as long as the air threat
from Midway remained. A sh tai of three CAP fighters had already gone up
with the first attack wave. Another sh tai was scheduled for launch within an
hour. Kaga, Hiry , and S ry had already contributed two, three, and three
planes, respectively, to the CAP force as well. Up from Akagi’s forward elevator
came a brace of nine fighters.34 Across the water, Commander Masuda could see
the other carriers following suit, spotting and warming up additional fighters so
they would be available at short notice. Even with all of the flight deck to work
with, these aircraft were spotted well aft, to give the pilots as much runoff room
to work with as possible. Hiry ’s fighter contingent had to be rolled out of the
way almost immediately after being spotted, though, as Yamaguchi’s flagship
sighted one of her own planes in difficulty. Ensign Akamatsu Saku’s torpedo
bomber had developed engine trouble, and had to abort. He came limping back
and was recovered without further incident.35
Meanwhile, in the forward magazines of Akagi and Kaga, armorers had
begun dragging seventeen-foot-long torpedoes from their stacked storage racks
in order to arm the reserve strike aircraft. The Type 91 Mod. 3 was the latest
addition to the aerial arsenal of a Navy that had elevated torpedo attack into an
art form. Each carrier stowed around thirty-six of these lethal fish, which had
just been introduced in the previous few months. Torpedoes were (and still are)
complex, finicky beasts. Yet they were worth their high cost and maintenance
headaches because of their capacity to inflict enormous damage on an enemy
ship. The new Type 91 packed a powerful 140 horsepower engine into its 17.7-
inch diameter frame, along with guidance gyroscopes, depth-keeping gauges,
steering motors, and a dozen other highly technical pieces of equipment, not to
mention a 529-pound warhead. It was capable of reaching speeds of forty-two
knots over a 2,000-yard range–substantially better performance than its
American counterpart.36
The Type 91 had a reputation of being extremely reliable if it was taken
care of, and the torpedo handlers in CarDiv 1 were experts at this. Each fish had
been scrupulously maintained, having been checked the day before to ensure that
it was topped off with distilled coolant water, kerosene fuel, and engine oil.37
Their air flasks had been charged to 2,560 PSI on a special compressor that ran
off an imported German two-cycle diesel in the torpedo maintenance room just
forward of the magazine.38 Now the men performed last-minute checks to ensure
that the detachable wooden tail fins and rubber nose cap–both of which shattered
on impact and thereby absorbed the shock from a high-altitude launch–were
securely in place. Finally, the running depth of each torpedo was set at a
relatively deep five meters. If any enemy forces were detected, it was assumed
that they would contain capital vessels, and with torpedoes it was best to hit the
target as low in its hull as possible.39 One by one, the gleaming, greasy fish were
secured by their attachment lug to the overhead tram, wrestled onto the ordnance
lift, and sent up to the hangars.
Once there, the torpedoes were trundled out to CarDiv 1’s Type 97 aircraft,
using the same sort of carts that had been employed earlier in the morning to
load the heavy Type 80 bombs. However, the Type 97 used different tokaki
mounting brackets for a torpedo than the 800-kg bomb–a fact that would have
important implications later in the day. The torpedo tokaki had been attached the
previous day to the aircraft of CarDiv 1. Meanwhile, on board CarDiv 2, the
dive-bombers were fueled and had their machine guns munitioned, but were left
otherwise unarmed. They would be armed on the flight deck as usual when
spotted. Until that time, the entire reserve strike force on all four carriers would
be kept below in the hangars.
This last point is an important one and is contrary to the common wisdom
that has been passed down from Fuchida’s book to innumerable Western texts on
the battle. At no time during the morning prior to 1000 was the reserve strike
force ever spotted on the flight decks. Spotting the reserve force at 0500 or so
would have required breaking the spot once the initial CAP fighters began
returning to their ships around 0700. Getting the aircraft back off the deck would
require between twenty and thirty minutes, representing a needless decrease in
the flexibility of the flight decks, as well as a colossal waste of labor.40
Everyone in the hangar crews sincerely hoped that if the Americans were
sighted this day, that there would be no repeat of the rearming snafus that had
plagued Kid Butai in the recent Indian Ocean operation. While leading the
aerial attack force home after bombing Colombo on the morning of April 5,
Commander Fuchida had recommended to Admiral Nagumo that the reserve
aircraft be readied for a follow-up strike against the same target.41 But those
second-wave planes had already been armed for antiship duties, just as today.
Nagumo had gone ahead and ordered the changeover at 0853 that morning, and
it had been nearly complete by the time the initial strike waves were landed at
0948.
Then, at 1000, a sighting report had come in advising the fleet of the
presence of two British cruisers (Dorsetshire and Cornwall) heading southwest
away from Ceylon at high speed. After some deliberation, at 1023 Nagumo had
given the order to rearm the reserve aircraft with antiship weapons once again.
The armament shuffle had not gone smoothly among the force’s torpedo planes.
Finally, in exasperation, CarDiv 2 went ahead and launched its force of dive-
bombers against the British warships at 1200, a full two hours after the initial
sighting report. Even then, the Type 97s aboard Sh kaku and Zuikaku still had
not been ready. In the event, it hadn’t altered the outcome a whit–CarDiv 2’s
dive-bombers had sunk the two British cruisers with dispatch–but Admiral
Nagumo had been understandably livid at the delays.42
However, on this morning in June, the men had complete confidence in the
reserve strike force–they were in every sense of the word Nagumo’s “A-team.”
CarDiv 1’s torpedo aircraft were nominally led by Fuchida, but in his absence
they would be commanded by Lt. Cdr. Murata Shigeharu. Murata was one of the
finest torpedo bomber pilots in the entire Navy, and a veteran of Pearl Harbor. A
training fanatic, it was Murata who had perfected the techniques needed to use
torpedoes in the shallow waters of the Hawaiian operation. He had then molded
the Kank tai of Kid Butai into a battle implement that could habitually achieve
the tight launch parameters required for such a daring operation.43 During the
attack itself, he had personally led his team in delivering the devastating torpedo
attacks against Battleship Row that had sunk Oklahoma, California, and West
Virginia. Murata’s opposite number on Kaga, Lt. Kitajima Ichir , led a similarly
experienced group of pilots.
On board S ry , CarDiv 2’s dive-bomber contingent was led by the famed
Lt. Cdr. Egusa Takashige, universally acknowledged as the leading dive-
bombing ace in the entire Navy. Possessed of a flamboyant personality, Egusa
was regarded by Genda as a “god-like” combat leader.44 He and his men had
terrorized their opponents with their startling prowess in the difficult art they
practiced. It was Egusa’s kanbaku team that had crushed the Cornwall and
Dorsetshire in April, sinking both cruisers in five minutes flat and scoring an
unprecedented percentage of hits against the veteran warships. Egusa’s
counterpart on Hiry , Lt. Kobayashi Michio, was another well-respected
veteran. If trouble arose, Nagumo clearly had a crack aerial team to deal with it.
In contrast to the relatively smooth flight operations on the carriers thus far,
the cruisers Tone and Chikuma were having a rough morning. Both cruisers were
supposed to have gotten their aircraft (three apiece) into the air at 0430 along
with the morning strike force. In the event, neither of them had been able to do
so. Of the two, Chikuma at least had the good sense to launch the scout planes
for lines Nos. 5 and 6 first (at 0435 and 0438, respectively) but then had taken
another twelve minutes getting her antisubmarine patrol plane in the air. Tone
had not fared even this well. Her initial plane (the antisubmarine scout) had been
launched at 0438, and the scout plane for line No. 3 had gone off at 0442.
However, getting the No. 4 scout plane launched took until 0500, a delay that
smacked of incompetence on someone’s part.
This plane, piloted by PO1c Amari Hiroshi,45 had experienced difficulties
in getting off the catapult, as the result of circumstances that remain murky.46
Perhaps he had engine problems, or an issue with the catapult itself. Floatplane
takeoffs were more dangerous than a carrier launch. Even with engines running
full out, the plane still had to be hurled off the end of the catapult by an
explosive charge, accelerating it to sixty-two MPH within the space of fifty feet.
At such whiplash-producing accelerations, even the slightest pilot miscalculation
or mechanical mishap meant instant death.47 If there were some sort of
mechanical fault evident, Amari probably wouldn’t have wanted to take off until
all systems had checked out fully.
However, others have suggested, including Chikuma’s hik ch , Lt. Kuroda
Makoto, that the orders for getting the floatplanes aloft were simply not
forthcoming, keeping the pilots waiting on board ship past the appointed hour.
Kuroda then went to the bridge to see what was going on. However, Chikuma’s
commander, Captain Komura Keizo, had not the “slightest recollection about
reasons why their departure was delayed.”48 Tone’s assistant communications
officer recalls the pilots simply waiting around for orders to depart, not any
equipment failure. Indeed, other sources have suggested that Tone’s catapult
officer was unfamiliar with the equipment and took longer than he should have
to get the launch under way.
According to both Genda and Kusaka, no communications apparently
passed between the cruisers and the fleet flagship apprising Nagumo of the
delay.49 Perhaps in the context of a four-hour recon mission, thirty minutes
either way didn’t really matter to either Admiral Abe or Nagumo. However, on
board Hiry it was a very different story, because both Admiral Yamaguchi and
Captain Kaku were exceedingly vexed at the various delays and decried the
apparent incompetence of CruDiv 8.50 Whatever the reason for the delay, the
effect was to further degrade the efficiency of an already porous search pattern.

7-6: Heavy cruiser Tone: This picture, taken in early 1942, shows Tone weighing
anchor. She is carrying a total of four reconnaissance floatplanes: three Type 0
and one Type 95. This photo seems to confirm that Tone’s nominal complement
of aircraft–five–may have already been below strength (four aircraft instead of
five) before the Battle of Midway. (Photo courtesy Todaka Kazushige)

As has already been related, Nagumo probably had never been under any
illusions about the ability of Tomonaga’s force to neutralize Midway with a
single strike, particularly in the absence of CarDiv 5’s attack squadrons. At 0520
he issued orders to the fleet to be prepared to launch a second strike: “Unless
unforeseen changes in the situation occur, the second attack wave, in
Organization #4 (under command of Air Officer on Kaga) … will be carried out
today.” This merely confirmed what the armorers on Akagi and Kaga already
suspected–at some point later in the morning, it would be necessary to replace
the torpedoes on the Type 97s with land-attack bombs. For the time being,
however, there was nothing to do but wait.
However, only ten minutes later, about 0532, a number of flies began
appearing in the ointment. First Nagara, and then Kirishima, in the front of the
formation, began laying down a smoke screen, an indication that their lookouts
had seen something. An enemy flying boat had been sighted bearing 166
degrees, forty kilometers away.51 The force had now been located for certain.
Even now, enemy aircraft might be on their way in. Fighters already in the air
scurried to drive the intruder away. Then, at 0545, Tone’s No. 4 plane radioed to
announce that at 0520 it had sighted not one, but two surfaced American
submarines on the outward bound leg of its search, just eighty miles from the
force. Kid Butai began thickening its combat air patrol. Hiry had already
added a trio of Zeros at 0525, and Akagi followed suit with three more at 0543.
At 0555 Tone’s No. 4 search plane initiated the day’s air actions when he
radioed: “15 enemy planes are heading towards you!”52
Unbeknownst to Nagumo, the Americans had not been idle this morning.
Given their sighting of Tanaka’s force the day before, they were now confident
that their intelligence on Japanese intentions was correct. However, Capt. Cyril
Simard was equally concerned that the Japanese might try to hit his base at dawn
on 4 June. Accordingly, he had elected to steal a march on his opponents and
begin flight operations before first light. Commencing at 0350, he began
launching a dawn CAP of Wildcats to cover the takeoff of the base’s bombers
and search planes. Twenty-two Catalina PBYs had subsequently taken off from
the lagoon and Eastern Island at 0415 to search radially all around the island.
Shortly thereafter, fifteen B-17s had been sent aloft with instructions to hit
Tanaka’s convoy again, but to be ready to be redirected to the north if Nagumo’s
carriers were detected.53 The rest of the island’s aircraft were kept on the
ground–armed, fueled, and manned.
As for the American carriers, they had commenced air operations at roughly
the same time as their Japanese counterparts. TF 17 and Yorktown, the
northernmost of the two American task forces, was slated to search the northern
flank, although Frank Jack Fletcher was relying on Midway to perform most of
the reconnaissance work this day. At 0420 Yorktown sent aloft ten of her SBDs
for this purpose. However, these aircraft were slated to search out to only 100
miles and to return within two hours. Yorktown also sent up six CAP fighters at
this time. Ten miles to the south, TF 16 had eschewed a CAP of its own, instead
spotting Hornet’s and Enterprise’s strike aircraft on the flight deck in readiness
for any sighting reports that might arrive.
By 0500 a temporary lull had settled over Midway and the American
carriers. For the island, though, all that had changed in short order. Lt. Howard
P. Ady’s PBY had detected Nagumo’s carriers at around 0530 and broadcast as
much at 0534.54 Shortly thereafter, another PBY, flown by Lt. William A.
Chase, sighted Japanese aircraft inbound and radioed in plain at 0544 “Many
planes heading Midway.”55 Chase subsequently sighted the Japanese fleet as
well, transmitting at 0552 “Two carriers and battleships bearing 320 distance
180 course 135 Speed 25.” Crucially, Chase only reported seeing two Japanese
flattops.56 In fact, this would set the pattern for every American sighting report
of the day. Given the broken cloud cover, and Kid Butai’s dispersed formation,
almost no American aircraft would report seeing more than two carriers at any
given time.
Ady and Chase’s report, while electrifying, created difficulties for Admiral
Fletcher. He had been apprised by Chester Nimitz that the Japanese might be
operating their carriers in two groups. If the PBYs had only seen two carriers,
that might mean that another Japanese task force lay still undetected somewhere
to the west or southwest. As such, Fletcher believed it would be wise to withhold
some of his striking power to deal with the second group if and when it was
located. It was essential, though, to attack the first Japanese task force as
expeditiously as possible. Accordingly, he ordered Raymond Spruance at 0607
to “Proceed southwesterly and attack enemy carriers as soon as definitely
located.”57
As for his own force, Yorktown was committed to recovering the morning
search SBDs in short order and was heading east into the wind to do so, thus
moving him away from the Japanese. As such, it would take TF 17 some time to
make up the lost ground to be in a position for launching his own strike. Fletcher
informed Spruance that TF 17 would follow TF 16 to the southwest as soon as
his search aircraft were recovered. If another Japanese carrier group was
detected during the interim, Fletcher would retain enough firepower to deal with
at least one additional enemy flight deck, even if Spruance had already fully
committed his aircraft to destroying the first group. If, however, no further
enemy carrier groups were detected, Fletcher would be able to back up
Spruance’s initial strike.
For his part, Spruance wanted to attack as soon as was practical, per
Fletcher’s orders to close and strike. However, he would have to wait a bit.
According to his calculations, and those of his staff, he was approximately 175
miles from the reported position of the Japanese carriers. His shortest-ranged
aircraft, the TBD torpedo planes and the Wildcats, both had about a 175-mile
combat radius, theoretically putting the Japanese within striking distance.
However, two factors militated against an immediate launch.
First, Fletcher and Spruance couldn’t be certain that Chase’s spotting
reports were accurate regarding their positions. In fact, Chase’s report placed the
Japanese 175 miles from the American carriers, when Kid Butai was, in fact,
more than 200 miles distant.58 Nor could the Americans be certain of what the
Japanese fleet’s movements would look like during the time Spruance’s aircraft
were heading toward the target. If the Japanese weren’t exactly where expected,
the attackers would have to perform additional searches to find them, burning
more precious fuel. That might force some aircraft to drop out, weakening the
overall impact of the attack.
Second, the breeze was light this morning, meaning that when he turned
into the wind to launch, he would have to ring his ships up to twenty-five knots
to generate sufficient wind over the bow. TF 16 would thus be moving
tangentially to the target at a high speed throughout the entire launch cycle,
increasing the range still further. For both these reasons, launching now meant
leaving no margin for error for his strike aircraft. Basic mathematics dictated
that the most prudent course of action was to delay until Spruance had closed the
range somewhat. He set 0700 as the fly-off time for both Enterprise and Hornet.
Ady’s and Chase’s reports had spurred Midway into furious activity, which
was compounded when the island’s own radar detected Tomonaga’s formation
shortly thereafter. By 0600 every available American aircraft had been
scrambled. An odd-lot assemblage of twenty Brewster Buffalo and four
Grumman Wildcat fighters started climbing to intercept the incoming Japanese.
Meanwhile, Midway’s attack aircraft stayed low and headed northwest,
intending to discover Nagumo’s carrier force. Behind them, Col. Harold
Shannon’s Marines readied every antiaircraft weapon at their disposal. The rest
of the American defenders braced themselves for the inevitable attack, the first
of the day’s desperate pitched battles. Its results would be known to the
Americans as they happened. For the Japanese commanders of Kid Butai,
however, the full details surrounding Tomonaga’s mission would remain
unknown for almost another three hours.
8

A Lull before the Storm–0600–0700

Back on board Kid Butai, the possibility of imminent air action had spurred
S ry into launching three fighters to augment the combat air patrol (CAP) at
0600. Hiry followed suit at 0612. Lookouts now scanned the sky intently.
Unlike the American ships, none of the Japanese ships at Midway had radar.
This fundamental fact vastly complicated the ability of the force to defend itself
against American air attacks. At this point, the Japanese Navy was at least two
years behind the U.S. Navy in development in this critical field and was only just
beginning to deploy its first operational sets to the fleet. The test beds for this
new technology, the battleships Ise and Hy ga, had had experimental sets
installed just a week before the sortie of Takasu’s force for Operation AL.1
However, none of the Midway ships carried such devices.2
To detect incoming aircraft, the Japanese still completely relied on the
Mark 1 eyeball, with all of the vagaries and stress-induced phantasms that it was
prone to. Japanese lookouts, at least when it came to surface warfare and
spotting enemy ships, were better than most. But the broken cloud cover this
morning made for a frustrating exercise, because aircraft could use it to their
advantage. The burden of aircraft detection fell primarily on the escort
destroyers, which had been deliberately pushed far enough away from the
carriers that they could provide some modicum of early warning.
Once an incoming raid was spotted, the question remained how to
communicate that information to the CAP fighters. The aircraft radios carried on
the Zero fighter were of inferior quality and of limited range and power and were
difficult to use. As a result, while all carrier Zeros had radios, pilots rarely relied
on them.3 Not only that, but communications with all aircraft aloft–CAP,
reconnaissance, and strike forces–was apparently conducted via a single radio
frequency, making it difficult for the various formations to be fed just the
information that was pertinent to them.4 Shipboard fighter control was haphazard
at best–there was no such thing as a combat information center (CIC) in the
sense of a centralized facility responsible for pooling and coordinating CAP
assets and vectoring them onto their targets. Each carrier’s hik ch was
nominally responsible for controlling his CAP fighters. In the absence of any
practical means for doing so, however, and burdened by running the flight deck
as well, it was impossible for the hik ch to dedicate the sort of undivided
attention to the CAP that it required.
As a result, the CAP pretty much ran itself, attacking anything that came
within visual range. When a ship spotted an incoming raid, it was standard
practice to begin laying smoke to attract the attention of the aircraft above, as
well as blinkering an alert to the carriers in the center of the formation.
Sometimes the ship would also fire a few salvos from its main battery in the
direction of the enemy to generate splashes, which would in turn draw the
attention of the fighters overhead.
The weakness of these command arrangements (if they can be called that)
are readily apparent. The Japanese CAP was more of an “understanding” than a
true system for air defense. It worked only so long as the enemy did not saturate
the ability of the lookouts to detect them and the fighters to self-direct their
formations to the attack. Against attacks that materialized sequentially, this
approach worked moderately well. As events would show, however, against a
multivector, multialtitude threat, the Japanese system proved too brittle and slow
to react. Worse yet, it relied far too much on the discipline of the individual
fighter pilots (who could only rarely see the “big picture”) to somehow maintain
an optimum distribution of fighters around the fleet. In fairness to the Japanese,
both of the other carrier navies (U.S. and Great Britain) were still groping their
way through these same issues. Even with radar, the Americans still didn’t have
a good approach to handling fighter direction yet. But the fact remained that
Japanese fighter defenses, while formidable, could be beaten.
Beyond the primary protection that the fighters provided, there were three
other factors that influenced the air defenses of the task force–the fleet’s
formation, the individual handling of the ships within that formation, and the
lethality of the ship’s antiaircraft guns. The Japanese differed from the U.S.
Navy in their approach to all three areas, sometimes drastically.
The fundamental issue of whether to disperse or concentrate one’s carriers
in the face of the enemy had been hotly debated on both sides of the Pacific
during the years leading up to the war. Dispersal of flight decks into widely
separated task forces held out the promise of reducing potential losses if one of
the groups was attacked. However, dispersal also carried with it attendant
problems of coordination–how, in conditions of radio silence, could one
reasonably assure that the task forces could launch and attack an enemy
together? Concentration, conversely, made coordination much easier, but it
inevitably placed all of the force’s eggs in one defensive basket.
The Japanese had initially been champions of dispersal, and most of their
war gaming and staff workup until 1937 had supported this viewpoint. However,
the China war had conclusively demonstrated two things to the Japanese. First,
bombers could only achieve decisive results if they were employed en masse,
and second, that bomber formations were inherently vulnerable to enemy
fighters and therefore required strong escorts in order to achieve their missions.
These factors, which were the foundation of their ability to mass offensive
airpower as well as they did, began to move the Japanese away from the view
that dispersal was the best way to employ their carriers. This movement was
confirmed in fleet maneuvers carried out in 1939–0, which demonstrated the
difficulties of offensive coordination between dispersed assets–a fact that the
Americans would learn to their cost on this very day.5
By the time First Air Fleet was formed, the idea of operational dispersal had
essentially been abandoned. The basic carrier formation that was eventually
adopted by First Air Fleet, and used by Kid Butai during most of the
engagements of the war thus far, was a box. At Midway, this basic configuration
remained in place. With 8,000 meters between ships, this was very loose
formation, allowing the carriers a good deal of sea room to operate. Intriguingly,
too, other than the individual plane guard destroyers, there were no escorts
anywhere near the flattops. Thus, it was up to the carriers to fend for themselves
against air attacks.
It should be noted, too, that contrary to some Midway accounts that
describe the Japanese escorts as being in a ring around the carriers, this is not
strictly correct. At this point in the war, the concept of a tight ring formation
optimized for antiaircraft screening (i.e., the active defense, via combined gun
power, of a capital ship), was unknown to the Japanese. While both the U.S. and
Royal Navies were already using such defensive alignments, ring formations did
not appear in Japanese doctrine until mid-1943.6 During the course of 4 June,
those destroyers that were not assigned as plane guards were pushed out to the
extreme perimeter of the formation to act as air-raid warning pickets. Thus,
while the formation might have appeared as a ring from the air, the escorts on
the perimeter were there for different purposes than an American ring formation
and were much farther out from the high-value vessels.
On the face of it, dispersing the escorting vessels might be considered poor
doctrine on the part of the Japanese. But as we will see, the majority of the
defensive firepower in the formation actually resided with the carriers
themselves. Given this, the placement of the destroyers on the perimeter made
good sense, because it bought time for the CAP to react to incoming threats. As
much as possible, the Japanese wanted to reduce the number of times the carriers
had to engage aircraft with their guns to an absolute minimum.
Akagi’s antiaircraft outfit was the weakest of the four. Her heavy AA
armament had yet to be upgraded to the more modern five-inch/40-caliber guns
that were now prevalent throughout the Navy. She was still equipped with older
4.7-inch/45-caliber weapons, which possessed neither the rate of fire nor the
maximum elevation of the newer gun. In fact, Akagi was slated for an overhaul
that would have upgraded her fire-control equipment and replaced her mounts
with the newer five-inch model as soon as she returned from Midway.7 Not only
were her guns outdated, but the sky arcs for her 4.7-inch battery were bad as
well. Instead of having her heavy mounts distributed around the four quadrants
of the ship, they were grouped amidships and relatively low on the hull. She had
no means to bring large-caliber fire to bear either directly forward or aft. On the
port side, the island blocked the forward arcs of the port battery even further. If a
target dove from directly overhead, particularly from the region of the port bow,
the 4.7-inch guns would have a very difficult time aiming at it, meaning that
only the 25-mm weapons would be able to fire. This made Akagi particularly
vulnerable to dive-bombers.
Kaga had her own difficulties in the gunnery department. While she sported
the newer five-inch/40 gun, her fire control system was the older Type 91 model,
rather than the Type 94 that was used on the other three carriers.8 “Fire control,”
the rather arcane science of how a ship’s guns are aimed at a target, is often
neglected in favor of focusing on the raw characteristics of the weapons
themselves. This is understandable–such factors as the rate of fire of a gun and
the size of the shell it fires make intuitive and quantitative sense, whereas the
relative merits of relying on barrage fire versus having a fully tachymetric
director are less obvious. However, a weapon itself has no intrinsic usefulness
unless it can hit its target, and in this rather vital respect Kaga was sadly lacking.

8-1: A fine study of Akagi’s port 4.7-inch AA battery, taken from the aftmost
mount looking forward toward the bridge. Note low placement of the batteries,
the generally poor sky arcs (i.e., the restricted firing areas resulting from
obstacles, like the bridge, being in the way), and the inability to fire across the
flight deck. (Photo courtesy Michael Wenger)

The Type 91 k shaki (director), which was first deployed in 1931, was a
slow, manually trained model lacking many of the power-assisted features that
helped Type 94 maintain a bead on a fast-moving airplane. Type 91 was
designed at a time when combat aircraft did not exceed speeds of 200 mph and
dive-bombing was still in its infancy. In the early 1930s, it was still thought that
the greatest danger to a ship came not from dive-bombers or torpedo aircraft, but
from level-bombers attacking at high altitudes. Aircraft attacking a ship in this
manner were obligated to fly straight and level in order for their bombsights to
make an accurate fix on the target. Unfortunately, in the intervening decade,
aircraft performance, as well as dive-bombing technique, had improved
enormously. Flying straight and level, as any of Kid Butai’s own dive-bomber
pilots would readily have attested, was a charming anachronism rarely witnessed
in modern combat. Contemporary aircraft, when piloted by skilled men,
maneuvered constantly and made their attack runs at frightening speeds.
Against these targets, Type 91’s only recourse was to direct the guns to fire
a barrage. Contrary to the popular lexicon, in which the word “barrage” implies
“firing roughly that-a-way with everything you’ve got,” barrage fire has a very
precise meaning in the parlance of the gunnery officer. Placing a barrage means
creating an imaginary box in the sky at some preset range and altitude, and then
pumping shells into the box as quickly as possible. The effect is to create a zone
of exploding flak through which an enemy plane must fly on its way to the
target. The advantages of this method are that it doesn’t take much time or
thinking to create a good barrage–all the shell fuses are set to a given range, and
the guns are shooting at an unmoving point. Over a short period, this method can
deliver impressive output from the guns. However, barrage fire also has a crucial
drawback, in that once a plane has made it through the barrage, it is effectively
home free. A barrage is a one-shot deal. If it fails, the target vessel can be
reasonably assured that enemy ordnance will soon be incoming.
Even the newer Type 94 systems on Akagi, S ry , and Hiry were scarcely
better able to defend their ships against dive-bombers. Type 94 was a fully
tachymetric system, meaning that it was designed to track and aim against
individual targets moving in three dimensions. It was theoretically capable of
tracking a plane moving at 500 knots, but in reality, the system was not nearly
fast enough to engage such a target. Dive-bombers, for instance, hurtled
downward at 225 knots, shedding appalling chunks of altitude as they went. In
the process, they created large vertical-rate changes that made life very difficult
for an opposing fire-control director. Not only that, but while the nominal range
of the five-inch/40 weapon was about 14,000 meters, in actual use the Japanese
figured it was only good out to about 7,000 meters, with a useful ceiling of about
3,000 meters. This meant that under normal combat conditions, even the five-
inch weapon had difficulty engaging a dive-bomber before it reached its
pushover point. Once it reached that point, it would deliver its ordnance in under
a minute.

8-2: Nominal and effective engagement ranges for the principal Japanese
antiaircraft weapons in use at the Battle of Midway. It can be seen that the
Japanese antiaircraft weapons did not have the ability to effectively engage a
dive-bomber before it reached its pushover point.

It wasn’t that Type 94 was a bad system. It was roughly on par with the
U.S. Navy’s basic Mk. 37 director (although when the Mk. 37 was paired with
radar inputs, its effectiveness was greatly enhanced).9 Being fully tachymetric,
Type 94 was certainly better than anything the British currently used. In fact, it
was probably the best AA fire-control system deployed on any Axis warship at
this time. But it couldn’t cope with a dive-bomber. Even with an experienced
crew, it took Type 94 a minimum of ten seconds, and often as long as twenty, to
establish a fire-control solution for the target.10 Obviously, if a ship was caught
unaware, spending the first twenty seconds of a minute-long engagement
window waiting for the computer to generate a solution was hardly conducive to
its survival. The end result was that a dive-bomber, once it reached pushover,
was an almost insuperable weapon system.
At shorter ranges, of course, ships also relied on their machine guns to
provide additional defensive fire. Light AA weapons compensated for their
relatively crude fire-control arrangements by simply putting a large number of
bullets in the air and hoping something hit. The Japanese were no exception in
this regard–their light AA fire-control system (the Type 95 k shaki) was
essentially a glorified telescope with an etched-glass ring sight that transmitted
training and elevation data to the guns it nominally controlled. It was then up to
the gun crews to follow the pointer of the director and hose down the target.
The standard Japanese light AA weapon was the Type 96 25-mm automatic
gun. It was a copy of a French Hotchkiss design and had been in licensed
production in Japan since 1936. Most of the 25-mm mounts in the fleet were
twin-barrel models, although Hiry had a number of the newer triple mounts. It
was generally well liked by the Japanese, but it suffered from some important
drawbacks. First off, its rate of fire was badly hampered by its ammunition
supply, which came in a fifteen-round box. These clips had to be changed
frequently, chopping the gun’s nominal rate of fire in half to only about 130
rounds per minute. With a full clip, the 25-mm had around a four-second burst
before it needed to be reloaded. As a result, it was standard Japanese practice to
fire only one barrel of a double or triple mount at a time. In this way, the gunner
was able to put sustained fire on a target while the other barrels were being
reloaded.11 Obviously, this was a poor substitute for being able to blaze away
with full firepower when it really counted. It must be noted, though, that against
a dive-bomber, the target might not be within the 25-mm’s effective range long
enough for the problems of changing out magazines to be terribly pertinent in
any case–the engagement window against such targets was very small.
This points out another flaw of the 25-mm weapon, namely, that it didn’t
have the range or hitting power it needed. While nominally effective out to 8,000
meters, Japanese gunners routinely held their fire until the target was within
2,000 meters. Against a torpedo airplane the 25-mm could be an effective
weapon. Given their need to launch their weapons below a given altitude,
torpedo planes were inherently more constrained in their vertical movements.
This eased the gunner’s problem by making his fire-control solution much more
two-dimensional. However, against a dive-bomber, the equation was more
complicated, because the target was moving in all three dimensions–and much
more rapidly to boot.
In the case of both heavy and light guns, a single director controlled a
“battery” composed of between two and four weapon mounts. On the Midway
carriers, the heavy AA batteries were grouped port and starboard into batteries of
three or four twin mounts apiece.12 With the lighter guns, S ry ’s and Hiry ’s
25-mm mounts were grouped into five batteries–two on each side and one at the
bow. Kaga’s and Akagi’s automatics were subdivided into six light batteries,
three per side. The important point here is that the total number of aircraft that
could be engaged at any one time by a carrier was really not equal to the number
of gun mounts, but rather to the number of fire-control directors, and hence the
number of batteries. Thus, seven or eight aircraft composed the theoretical
maximum that any of the carriers could protect itself against at any one time. In
practice, this number was actually much lower, as multiple 25-mm batteries
tended to be concentrated against a single target. Consequently, even a large
ship’s defensive systems could be swamped fairly easily if the CAP fighters
didn’t thin out the attackers beforehand. AA was therefore really only useful for
stopping “leakers.”
The other major defense the Japanese carriers had against their attackers
was the ship’s helm. The Japanese viewed maneuver as a primary mechanism to
defeat incoming aircraft. This approach had pros and cons. A skilled skipper
could usually make life very difficult against a slow attacking aircraft, such as a
torpedo plane. Particularly against the Americans, where both components of the
weapon system (torpedo and plane) were subpar in terms of speed, simply
executing a sharp turn to place the aircraft astern could complicate their attack
greatly. Such a maneuver presented the plane with a markedly longer approach
and lengthened its exposure to fighters and AA fire accordingly. American
airborne torpedoes, with a top speed of only thirty-three knots, were in roughly
the same predicament. Both Hiry and S ry could outrun the American “fish”
outright, and even against Kaga and Akagi they had little chance of hitting unless
the Americans laid down a perfectly timed attack from several directions.
However, using violent maneuvers to throw off attackers had its downsides
as well. In the first place, it made it very difficult for any escorting ship to stay
close enough to the carrier to add effective firepower to her defense. The
chances of collision with one’s charge were very real under such circumstances,
and destroyers knew they had to keep their distance, although with the bulk of
the Japanese destroyers pushed out to the perimeter of the formation on 4 June,
this was less of a problem. However, radical maneuvers also badly degraded the
ability of a fire-control system to hit its target. Fire-control computers were
essentially mechanical slide rules that accepted numerous inputs such as target
speed, target course, ship’s own speed and course, and other variables. These
were fed into the computer by a gang of crewmen (sometimes as many as a
dozen manned the computer alone) via dials and knobs. The result was then
mechanically generated, displayed, and fed back to the guns. Putting the ship’s
helm over hard introduced rates of change into the system of several degrees per
second for at least one crucial variable (known as “ship’s own course”), making
it very difficult to generate a meaningful solution for the guns. In fact, it was
generally acknowledged that performing a radical turn threw the solution right
out the window.
 Both the Japanese and American Navies recognized this problem, but each
adopted a different approach to it. The Japanese accepted the fact that fire
control against aircraft was exceedingly difficult and continued to rely on the
helm to evade attack throughout the war. Even as late as 1944, Japanese doctrine
prescribed that, “In AA combat the normal procedure will be to maneuver at
long range avoiding as much as possible any reduction in the effectiveness of
fire. When the enemy tries to attack at close quarters, the required evasive
maneuvers will be executed, if necessary, without regard to development of
firepower.”13
This de-emphasis on firepower in preference for the helm was in marked
contrast to American practice. American capital ships, knowing that they were
closely surrounded by escorts that were actively contributing to their defense,
tended to maneuver in such a way as to maximize the aggregate firepower of the
group. Unless they were absolutely forced to, American vessels avoided radical
maneuvers. U.S. doctrine in 1944 noted that while individual ships were allowed
to maneuver to avoid a specific threat, “This doctrine does not constitute an
unrestricted license to individual maneuver. Lack of restraint exacts heavy
penalties. Ships become scattered. Mutual support is lost. Risk of collision is
added to the dangers of enemy weapons.”14
The USN’s approach would certainly make more sense by 1943, when the
massed firepower from five-inch, 40-mm Bofors and 20-mm Oerlikons (coupled
with radar direction) mounted on its warships would fill the air with almost
impenetrable curtains of fire. In June 1942, though, the “correct” answer to the
question of whether or not to maneuver was far less obvious. For one thing, at
this stage of the war, firepower from both side’s escorts was minimal. The
average destroyer in 1942 sported only a handful of light automatic weapons.
Japanese “tin cans” often carried little more than a pair of twin 25-mm mounts.
Not only that, but their low-angle five-inch guns, which were optimized for
surface fighting, were practically useless as antiaircraft weapons. They could
neither elevate high enough, nor train quickly enough to engage a fast-moving
airplane. Consequently, the Japanese destroyers didn’t have a lot to contribute in
the way of screening fire.
An examination of Kid Butai’s aggregate AA firepower makes this fact
clear. The four carriers between them mounted more than half the total usable
AA barrels in the formation. In terms of “throw weight”–the actual weight of
shells that could be fired within a given amount of time–the carriers accounted
for nearly 60 percent of the force’s total. Each of the carriers individually had
twice the throw weight of light cruiser Nagara and all eleven of the force’s
destroyers combined. The only other ships in the force with any meaningful AA
firepower were the two battleships and the heavy cruisers Tone and Chikuma.
However, unlike a destroyer, the handling characteristics of these large vessels
made them less useful for taking up station close to a carrier, even if they had
wanted to. To add to this basic problem, Tone’s and Chikuma’s duties as
floatplane mother ships, as well as indicating incoming raids to the CAP by
firing their main batteries at intruders, meant that they had their own matters to
attend to. The battleships were high-value targets in themselves and maneuvered
independently. The result was that the only help that each carrier could likely
expect in the event of an attack would come from its division partner, assuming
it was close by.
Given this state of affairs, preferring maneuver over firepower may well
have been the “right” answer for the Japanese in mid-1942. However, it was
hardly an answer derived from a position of strength, and the results of the
coming battle would reflect this. Of the 146 American aircraft lost to all causes
on 4 June, only two would be confirmed victims of Japanese antiaircraft fire.15
To this total can perhaps be added some of the aircraft written off as constructive
losses by the Americans after the battle, but the point must also be made that
these were aircraft that had lived long enough to deliver their ordnance and then
make it home. Indeed, more American aircraft were lost in landing accidents
than from Japanese flak.16
The final point that must be made about Japanese antiaircraft procedures is
that the Japanese themselves probably did not know just how weak their
defenses actually were. Except for an isolated incident in the Indian Ocean, Kid
Butai had never really faced a concerted air attack. There, on 9 April, a flight of
nine British Blenheim bombers operating out of Ceylon had managed to
penetrate the Striking Force’s CAP without being detected. Hiry had observed
the incoming enemy but had inexplicably failed to pass along a warning to the
rest of the force.17 The first indication that anyone on Akagi had that something
was amiss was when waterspouts off the flagship’s starboard bow announced the
thundering arrival of nine sticks of bombs dropped from an altitude of 10,000
feet. Scrambling fighters had then pursued the attackers, eventually shooting
down all but four of the bombers.18
By all accounts, Kid Butai was somewhat chastened by this lesson. The
official Japanese war history, Senshi S sho, notes that “the fact that the carrier
strike force, with a combat patrol overhead was bombed without being aware of
it was an extremely serious matter.”19 Hiry ’s battle report for the mission noted
that it was an absolute priority to improve detection facilities to deal with these
threats. Having some of the world’s foremost practitioners of the art of naval
dive-bombing on board, it should have been apparent that if the Blenheims had
been Dauntlesses, and not level-bombers, Akagi might well have been critically
damaged or even sunk.
Yet, there are no indications that any concrete measures had been taken by
the Japanese to counter the threat posed by such attacks. For one thing, the
Japanese may well have had too little experience with live firing their antiaircraft
weapons against enemies to have drawn any lessons. For another, they may
simply have dismissed the enemy’s ability to hit their ships. By the time
American carrier pilots demonstrated conclusively at Coral Sea that they could
hit anything that moved, it was a little late for the Japanese to reflect on these
lessons before sortieing for Midway. In the absence of any better arrangements,
the only thing the Japanese could do under the circumstances was simply try
harder not to be caught with their pants down.

Nagumo had more to fret over than just the threat of incoming aircraft. He was
also worrying about his own attack force–Tomonaga should have been
approaching Midway about now. Finally, at 0616, Akagi overheard a message.
Tomonaga’s radio operator, PO1c Murai, was tapping out a message from the
Hiry strike commander to his force: “Assault Method No. 2; wind 90 degrees,
nine meters, approach course 270 degrees.” As anticipated, Tomonaga was
attacking out of the east, so as to have the sun at his back. Apparently the wind
over the target was gusty. Four minutes later, Tomonaga was overheard giving
the order to the formations to assume their attack positions.20
Another empty fifteen minutes followed. Nagumo knew that his air forces
were in battle to the south, but he knew absolutely nothing of the tactical
situation over Midway and could do nothing to intercede. After the morning’s
discovery by the American PBYs, the question of surprising the base seemed
moot, but how many enemy aircraft were still there? How stiff had their
antiaircraft defenses been? Had Suganami’s fighter escort been sufficiently
powerful to brush aside their American opposite numbers? It was one of the
most frustrating aspects of exercising command over a force that fought well
beyond visual range–the powerless waiting, devoid of all but the most cursory
information on the circumstances of battle, the supply of actionable battle data
choked down to the anemic transmission rate of the force’s radiotelegraphs. The
man commanding the most powerful carrier force in the world could do nothing
but wait for the message orderlies. Every so often one of them would run up to
the bridge from Akagi’s radio room and deposit the scanty fruit of Murai’s
telltale tapping. In the interim, Nagumo had little to do but stare out the bridge
windows.
Nothing further was heard until 0636, when Tomonaga radioed another
message to his entire force: “Assume penetration formation.” This was an
indication that Tomonaga wanted the various ch tai and sh tai (particularly the
dive-bombers, which necessarily had been scattered by their individual attack
runs) to begin regrouping into an orderly formation–one that could defend itself.
The actual bombing attack on Midway–save for the fighters strafing the target–
was now almost over, and the tedious process of rounding up the stragglers had
begun. Nine minutes later, at 0645, Tomonaga sent out his first message to the
Mobile Striking Force: “We have completed our attack and are homeward
bound.”
In the meantime, Akagi was setting up to cycle her CAP fighters. Lt.
Ibusuki Masanobu and his sh tai of three Zeros were warming up on the flight
deck. They were sent aloft at 0655, and the deckhands immediately prepared to
take aboard PO1c Tanaka Katsumi and the other two fighters that had flown the
morning’s first CAP watch. These were brought down starting at 0659. Hiry
was starting to do the same, preparing to land Lt. Mori Shigeru and his two
wingmen.

By around 0630, out of sight and out of mind, Nagumo’s meager scouting
arrangements had quietly gone to hell. The Chikuma aircraft flying the sixth
search line (along bearing 54 degrees) had radioed Nagumo at 0649 that,
because of bad weather, he was returning to base. The timing of his message
indicates that he would only then have been reaching the outer end of his first
search leg. Further south, flying the 77-degree search line, Chikuma’s No. 1
plane was apparently hotdogging it. Instead of flying below the cloud cover that
dotted its route, this plane was flying above weather and merely peeking down
through the clouds as the opportunity afforded itself. Either that, or it was badly
off course. One of these explanations must be true, else by all rights it should
have detected Task Force 17 sometime during its outbound leg.
South of Chikuma No. 1, Tone No. 4 was continuing on its way along the
fourth search line (down the 100 degree bearing). However, in retrospect it
seems almost certain that this aircraft was not flying along its intended route.
Having started a half an hour late, Petty Officer Amari may have been intending
to save Tone the trouble of doing a late recovery and was simply cutting his
route short so as to make his appointed return time.21 Furthermore, there are
indications that he may have had a run-in with an American PBY22 Whatever the
reason, though, instead of flying out to the full 300 nautical miles of his intended
search, Amari was apparently either pushed off course, and/or made his dogleg
at about 220 miles.23 Had he not done so, he would not have been in position to
spot the Americans shortly thereafter. Neither Amari nor any of his crew were to
survive the war, and the truth is that no one knows exactly what route he flew
that day or why he did so, leaving his movements open to speculation.

8-3: State of Japanese search arrangements at approximately 0630, with nominal
search ranges superimposed. Chikuma plane No. 1, flying the No. 5 search line,
should have detected TF 17 at about this time, but failed to do so.


8-4: Planned course tracks of Chikuma No. 1 and Tone No. 4 search planes, with
the speculative course track presumably flown by Tone No. 4. (Source: Senshi S
sho, p. 309)

Nagumo was aware of the return of Chikuma’s No. 1 scout plane as a result
of weather conditions, but he had no way of knowing that the other two aircraft
were not doing their jobs. All he knew for certain was that he had heard no
tidings at all from his disengaged flank. So far as he and his staff were aware,
everything was going pretty much according to plan. Within an hour, though, he
would be disabused of that notion in the most inconvenient way imaginable.
9

The Enemy Revealed–0700–0800

At precisely 0700, Akagi finally received word from Tomonaga regarding

the outcome of the morning’s strike when another decoded transmission was
brought up to the bridge. The strike leader’s message was blunt enough: “There
is need for a second attack wave.” Around the bridge, mental shoulder shrugging
was the order of the day–no big surprise there. Seventy-odd bombers had,
indeed, been insufficient to put Midway out of business, just as many of the staff
had foreseen. Now the question was what to do about it?
The manner with which Tomonaga transmitted his message, which was
clearly noted by the American signals intelligence unit on Hawaii, also supports
the picture of a force that knew all along that it would have to strike Midway
again this day.1 Tomonaga’s message–a single code group repeated three times:
“KAWA KAWA KAWA 0400”2 –was strongly reminiscent of the famous
“TORA TORA TORA” signal used at Pearl Harbor, and is indicative of a
prearranged message format. No matter what Yamamoto’s instructions had been
regarding only needing to hit Midway once, it seems clear that Nagumo’s staff
had arranged prior to Tomonaga’s departure that the strike leader should have
this certain code group in his back pocket if need be. Having sortied a day late,
with less time to reduce the island before the landings, it is little wonder that Kid
Butai had anticipated hitting the place more than once this day and had
planned accordingly.
While Nagumo pondered Tomonaga’s signal, Akagi prepared to reinforce
the combat air patrol still further. As soon as Tanaka’s previous threesome of
Zeros had been brought on board and stowed down the forward elevator, the
same elevator began bringing up more fighters. The next group of five aircraft to
go up would include three from the 6th K k tai, under the command of Lt.
Kaneko Tadashi. Kaneko, a fine pilot, who would go on to make ace, was just
itching to get into action.3 Commander Masuda, Akagis hik ch , had seen no
reason not to use the “cargo” aircraft in this fashion. Spotting began a little
before 0700. S ry was spotting three fighters of her own. Both ships sent their
Zeros up at 0710, just as the first real American attack developed.
Japanese lookouts on Akagi spotted enemy planes coming in low at 0710.
Captain Aoki turned the flagship to head into them. Probably none of the men on
the bridge recognized these particular aircraft. They were, in fact, six of the
American’s new TBF Avenger torpedo planes and four twin-engined B-26
Marauder medium bombers. Neither had earned much of a reputation in the
Pacific war thus far. In fact, this was the first combat mission ever for an
Avenger. Both types were big and robust, and the B-26 was blazing fast as well.
The two American formations were coming in on the bows of the lead carriers.
As far as the Japanese could tell, they were attempting a version of an anvil
attack, except that instead of targeting a single ship on either bow (which might
have produced results), they unwittingly chose to divide their attentions between
the two division flagships–Akagi and Hiry . This was hardly surprising, given
that one flight was manned by U.S. Army aviators, the other by Navy fliers,
neither of whom had had any opportunity to coordinate their attacks with their
opposite numbers. Their near-simultaneous arrival at their objective was wholly
unintentional.

9-1: 0710 attack on Kid Butai. This initial set of attacks nearly resulted in a
successful suicide attack on Akagi.

Akagi had several CAP fighters up, including a sh tai led by WO Ono
Zenji, a second under Lt. Ibusuki Masanobu, and now Lieutenant Kaneko’s still-
launching formation.4 Kaneko headed straight toward the B-26s along with the
rest of the flagship’s complement. At the same time, Hiry ’s fighters also swung
into action. She had seven in the air, including a sh tai apiece under PO1c Hino
Masato and WO Kodama Yoshimi. The seventh plane was that of PO2c Sakai
Ichiro, the final plane from Hiry ’s first CAP watch that had gone up at 0430.
His flight mates–Lieutenant Mori and wingman PO2c Yamamoto T ru–had
already landed at 0700, but Sakai had not yet made it down and apparently
decided to peel out of his landing approach to join in the fray.
S ry ’s and Kaga’s fighters also contributed, although it is likely that they
played more of a role in the latter stages of the action. Kaga’s first CAP watch of
two planes under the very senior PO1c Yamamoto Akira, and her second watch
of five planes, under Ens. Yamaguchi Hiroyuki, both made their presence
known. S ry , likewise, sent at least two sh tai in to the attack, including PO1c
Harada Kaname’s trio and the newly launched Lt. Fujita Iyozo and his two
wingmen. Thus, Kid Butai dispatched a total of over thirty fighters to destroy
the ten American warplanes of this first raid.

The American aviators quickly discovered that Japanese carrier fighter pilots
were every bit as good as their reputations made them out to be. Kid Butai’s
fighters set upon the interlopers like wolves. For their part, though, the Japanese
found the B-26s speedy and difficult to bring down. Not only that, but the sleek
American bombers had decent defensive armament as well. Akagi’s PO3c
Hanyu Toichiro discovered this fact to his cost, killed by a Marauder’s fire
during the engagement. The Avengers, too, exacted a price, splashing the late-
landing Sakai within sight of his ship.
Yet the Zeros methodically slashed at the bombers with well-timed runs,
culling them out of their groups and bringing them down. They hurled at least
one of the Marauders flaming into the sea, probably at the hands of the skilled
Lieutenant Kaneko.5 To the north, Lieutenant Fujita’s fliers began scoring
heavily on the Avengers.6 The Americans could do little but grimly hang on,
boring in low and fast. The Avengers were savaged, all but one of them
eventually being destroyed. The few American aircraft that managed to remain
aloft were in tough shape as well–all of them holed dozens or even hundreds of
times. Yet despite the prodigious punishment they meted out, the CAP couldn’t
bring all of the attackers down before they reached their drop points.
On board Hiry , 2nd Lt. Nagayasu Yasukuni, commander of her starboard
five-inch guns, gave the order to commence firing. Hiry cranked up to flank
speed, thirty-four knots, and turned hard to port to unmask her starboard
batteries.7 Across the way, Akagi was doing the same, and Tone, Chikuma, and
Nagara were all blazing away as well. Finally, under heavy attack, several of the
planes launched their torpedoes.
To the cool eyes on board the carriers, it was clear that the Americans
weren’t very good at this sort of thing. They had dropped their fish much too far
away. Yet, drop them they did, and their targets had no choice but to react.
Nagara had been targeted by an Avenger pilot who had dumped his torpedo at
whatever ship was closest, thinking his badly shot-up plane was about to go in
the drink.8 Hiry simply ran away from the pair that had been launched against
her. Meanwhile, Captain Aoki first threw his big ship into a looping port turn to
avoid the torpedoes being aimed at Hiry by the Avengers, then executed a neat
one-eighty back to starboard to avoid the fish dropped by the surviving B-26s. In
the process, Akagi received a strafing from one of the Marauders as it roared
overhead after its attack. The flagship’s No. 2 machine-gun mount suffered some
minor damage, and two men were killed.9
The American aircraft were suddenly gone–except for one. This particular
B-26, having been hit by Akagi’s automatic weapons, made no effort to pull out
of its run. Instead, he bored in directly at Akagi’s bridge, where Nagumo and his
staff stared wide-eyed back at their assailant. The plane was either unnavigable,
or the American pilot, knowing his life was forfeit in any case, had decided to
sell himself dearly.10 The bridge watch were stunned–Americans weren’t
supposed to show this sort of bravery. Then reflexes took over and the men
ducked as the American plane barreled in–there was no chance of it missing
now. But instead of an explosion, the green bomber somehow flashed past the
top of the island and cartwheeled into the sea. Nagumo and his staff let out a
collective shout of relief–how it had missed, no one knew, but that had been too
close by half!
If Tomonaga’s message fifteen minutes earlier hadn’t already decided
matters for Nagumo, the determined self-sacrifice of this particular Marauder
may well have done so. Having just evaded torpedoes, been strafed, and then
nearly been turned into a bomber hood ornament, Nagumo’s blood was up.
Enough was enough. It was clear that Midway was still full of fight, and until the
island was neutralized it would be a threat. The Americans had not been terribly
skilled, but everyone on the bridge had just witnessed firsthand how important
luck was in combat. Had the American plane been ten feet lower, Akagi’s island
would have been given a daisy cutter, and the staff of First Air Fleet would have
all been killed outright. It was time to put the American base out of business.
However, attacking Midway in an effective manner meant disobeying direct
orders from Yamamoto that the Striking Force keep its reserve aircraft armed for
antiship operations.
Nagumo has been endlessly pilloried for deciding to violate this order. Yet,
very few people have reflected on the practical implications of not doing so, or
on whether Yamamoto’s order was sound in the first place. Had Nagumo rigidly
adhered to his superior’s wishes, what were his realistic options for beating
down the island’s defenses? Was he simply to let Tomonaga’s men go back out
later in the day to finish the job? Nagumo, after all, had absolutely no detailed
information regarding the state of the island after Tomonaga’s attack. All he
knew was that his flight leader had thought a second strike necessary. Relying on
only half of his force to single-handedly bring about Midway’s destruction, even
over the course of multiple attacks, really didn’t make much sense. Tomonaga’s
air group was bound to take losses in the process, and as it did so, it would
become weaker even if the enemy was correspondingly weakened as well. Yet,
Yamamoto’s orders presumably would have kept Egusa and the rest of the “A-
team” sunning themselves on the flight decks while Tomonaga and his men beat
themselves bloody. The whole idea was simply asinine.
Genda certainly agreed with this assessment, remarking after the war that
Yamamoto’s instructions were “inflexible.” He added that if the order had been
adhered to, “one-half of the attack force would be kept idle unless a suitable
enemy target [was] located. A decision should [have been] made depending
upon the circumstances.”11 Kusaka, too, felt that it was “intolerable for the
commander at the front to keep [his] half strength in readiness indefinitely only
for an enemy force which might not be in the area after all.”12 Both men were
absolutely correct in their judgment.
The job of Admiral Nagumo and his staff was to craft timely, appropriate
responses to the conditions then pertaining. Regarding Midway, one approach
that strongly recommended itself at this juncture was reducing Kid Butai’s own
casualties by bringing overwhelming power to bear on the enemy–an approach
to warfare that has been highly regarded since mankind first started sharpening
sticks. If no American warships were nearby, it clearly made sense for Nagumo
to attack Midway with as large a follow-up strike as possible in order to force
the (presumably) depleted enemy into an even more unfavorable attritional
spiral.
There was another practical reason for violating the order–that of time.
Regardless of what condition Tomonaga’s group came home in, it would be a
matter of several hours before they could be turned around for another attack.
Planes had to be refueled and rearmed, damaged aircraft patched up, and the
pilots debriefed and fed. Replacement aviators would need to be slotted in for
the crewmen who had been wounded. A new mission plan would have to be
created, the pilots briefed, and then the attack force armed, fueled, spotted, and
launched. This probably could not have happened before the early afternoon.
Giving the enemy more time to lick his own wounds and recover made no sense
whatsoever–it was far better to hit the Americans again as quickly as possible,
preferably while their aircraft were on the ground and being refueled.
Here, in the cold light of combat on the morning of 4 June, Yamamoto’s
earlier order was revealed for what it was–twaddle. Concocted in the unreal
atmosphere of May’s war games, his instructions contained no operational
parameters and no indications as to when Egusa’s force could be considered
available for land attack operations. Was Nagumo to reserve these aircraft until
the outward-bound legs of the recon flights were completed, or until the scouts
returned to Kid Butai, or simply forever? Apparently, no one knew.
Yamamoto’s order, if literally interpreted, essentially condemned Nagumo to
fight with one hand tied behind his back–pitting Tomonaga’s strike group
against Midway in a pathetic race to see who limped to impotence first. Had
Yamamoto truly been concerned about the U.S. Navy making its presence felt in
the initial phase of operations, he should have backed up his reserve strike
concept with requirements for a realistic scouting scheme and other contingency
plans, so as to guarantee Nagumo’s ability to deal with one opponent at a time.
Instead, he had delivered a single flippant order–verbally, almost casually, and
without any set of guiding particulars or modifying conditions. When viewed in
this light, it is almost impossible to anticipate Nagumo not making the decision
to hit the island again with his reserve force at some point during the morning.

9-2: Air operations time line. This schematic shows the tempo of air operations
on board the four Japanese carriers on the morning of 4 June, as well as the
American attacks against them.

Nagumo has also been castigated for not waiting to rearm his reserve
aircraft until the morning’s reconnaissance searches were completed. This
criticism hits nearer the mark, in that (as will be seen) his relatively speedy
decision to commence rearming deprived the force of vital time when a valid
scouting report actually arrived. However, it should be remembered that by
0715, the meaningful portions of the morning’s searches were completed for all
intents and purposes. The scout aircraft had now been aloft for nearly three
hours. They had already run their outbound routes and were currently halfway
through their left-hand doglegs as well. Within fifteen minutes, all of them
would be turning for home. As soon as that occurred, the symmetry of the search
pattern would break down as the search planes began individually converging on
Kid Butai. It was probably never expected that anyone would find anything on
the inbound leg in any case.
In the midst of these goings-on, Nagumo had been handed a message that
had just been forwarded from Kaga. Kaga’s hik ch , Cdr. Amagai Takahisa,
had apparently received a message regarding the effects of the Midway attack
from Kaga’s dive-bomber leader (Lt. Ogawa Shoichi) at 0640. Ogawa reported
that Sand Island had been bombed and “great results obtained.”13 Nagumo had
only to recall the American Marauders boring in a few minutes previously to put
Ogawa’s optimistic assessment into proper perspective. Accordingly, at 0715
Nagumo sent the following message to the fleet: “Planes in second attack wave
stand by to carry out attack today. Reequip yourselves with bombs.”

At 0720 Akagi took on board a single Zero. This plane, piloted by PO1c
Iwashiro Yoshio, had been airborne a grand total of twenty-five minutes. His sh
tai leader, Lt. Ibusuki Masanobu, was still aloft with the CAP. His wingman,
Hanyu, was already dead. Iwashiro was likely out of cannon ammunition, having
just experienced firsthand the amount of punishment American bombers could
take (and dish out) before folding. This would become a common occurrence
during the morning, with several Japanese fighters going up and coming right
back down again after an attack. With sixty rounds of cannon ammunition for
each of the Zero’s two cannons, they weren’t good for more than a few firing
runs. Iwashiro’s plane was quickly struck below
Down below, the hangar crews were beginning to carry out the rearming
order issued five minutes previously. As will be recalled, the reserve strike
aircraft had not been on the flight decks yet this morning.14 Consequently, there
had been no need to send these aircraft back below to be worked on. Within the
hangars, the forty-three carrier attack planes on board CarDiv 1 were currently
armed with torpedoes.15 These would need to be changed to Type 80 land bombs
for the attack against the atoll. However, on board CarDiv 2, the thirty-four
kanbaku were still unarmed at this point, because that normally occurred on the
flight deck during spotting. Thus, none of them needed to be rearmed, either.
Nagumo’s orders really only pertained in an immediate sense to the Type 97
aircraft on board Akagi and Kaga. Until CarDiv 1 had completed rearming,
CarDiv 2 would wait to begin its spot. This represents a rather different vision of
the rearming situation than has been portrayed in most texts on the battle, which
have all four carriers engaged in frantic rearming activities at this time.
On board CarDiv 1, though, the activity was real enough. Changing from
torpedoes to bombs was no simple matter. Not only did it require removing the
torpedo from the aircraft, it also entailed changing the mounting hardware
(tokaki) on the belly of the aircraft. Unlike the dive-bombers, whose main
payloads were roughly the same size and shape whether they were high-
explosive or semi-armor-piercing, the Type 97 aircraft carried ordnance that
differed wildly in shape, requiring differently shaped mounting brackets as
well.16 Thus, rearming with new ordnance was a complex, multistep operation.
In Akagi, armorers pushed their six heavy carts out to the waiting kank and
began the process of detaching the torpedo-carrying harness. They then lowered
the torpedo onto the cart via the plane’s winch. Once it was down, a team of
handlers began pushing it gingerly through the crowded hangar and back to the
ordnance elevator to take it back below. However, once the men arrived, they
found the elevator already in use hauling Type 80 bombs up to the hangar deck.
Indeed, the bomb handlers in the magazines quickly let it be known that they had
their hands full just getting the bombs out of storage and not to send anything
down to them yet.17 The armorers on the hangar deck had little choice in the
matter except to deposit their loads in the holding racks next to the ordnance
elevator. Each carrier had sets of curving brackets attached to the hangar
bulkheads near the bomb lift for temporary storage of ordnance in just such
situations. One by one the torpedoes were secured to the racks using block and
tackle, and then the men moved the cart back to the elevator to receive the bomb.
As always, the bombs came up in pieces. They would need to be assembled
before they were attached to their planes.
Meanwhile, back at the aircraft, another group of men was sweating to
remove the old tokaki and get the new hardware screwed into the plane. This
operation took some twenty minutes to perform amid the clatter of wrenches and
the grunts of the armorers. Kaga was going through the same motions. She had a
larger kank squadron, but she also had nine ordnance carts, as opposed to
Akagi’s six. The net result was that the time needed to change Kaga’s squadron
over was identical–the limiting factor in the operation was not the number of
aircraft, but rather the 1:3 ratio of carts to planes.
All in all, it took around half an hour to rearm a Kank , the bulk of the time
being spent in changing the mounting hardware and assembling the bomb.
Despite the portrayals of the entire hangar buzzing with activity, in truth the
action was rather localized. While the first ch tai was attended to, the
maintenance crews for the other twelve kank of Akagi’s group simply idled–
their mounting hardware couldn’t be switched until the torpedoes were off,
which in turn required a cart. With only six carts to go around, it was a long
process, one marked by tedium for the crews waiting to get one, followed by
frantic labor as they tried to replace the tokaki as quickly as possible.
Armed with this information, we can make some fairly accurate estimates
concerning what Nagumo’s options were at any given time during the morning.
The math is reasonably straightforward–half an hour to rearm a single ch tai,
three ch tai per carrier, and only one ch tai can be rearmed at a time–hence an
hour and a half to rearm the lot.18 Once complete, about forty-five minutes were
then required to lift, spot, warm up, and launch the attack group. For dive-
bombers, a few minutes longer would probably be added on the flight deck for
arming. All in all, it would not be unreasonable to assume that two and a half
hours would be required before the force could be completely rearmed, spotted,
and warmed up for launch. This meant that at a bare minimum, with no
interruptions, the reserve strike force would not be ready much before 0930. This
time estimate stands in contrast to estimates put forth in earlier Western tracts
that suggest that an hour and a half might have been sufficient for sending off
the second strike. Furthermore, it is clear from the foregoing that attacking
Midway two and a half hours from when the order was given with full deckload
strikes from all four carriers was only achievable if everything went smoothly,
above decks and below.
This projected launch time obviously depended heavily on the speediness of
the forthcoming recovery operations. Tomonaga’s planes would begin orbiting
the carriers at around 0815, while rearming was still going on in the hangars of
CarDiv 1. If the reserve strike was to be spotted starting at 0845 (i.e., an hour
and a half from the time the rearming order was given), all of Tomonaga’s strike
aircraft would need to be recovered and stowed below to clear the flight deck for
spotting. In the days before modern angled flight decks and deck-edge elevators,
carriers could do only one thing at a time on their flight deck–spot aircraft,
launch aircraft, or recover aircraft. For all practical purposes, one operation
could not be started until the other was complete.
It is true, of course, that if Nagumo had given the word to attack promptly
at 0715, he could probably have struck Midway with just the dive-bombers from
CarDiv 2. These aircraft were as yet unarmed. They could have been spotted,
armed, and launched by about 0800. However, this would have meant scrapping
the idea of a coordinated strike with the First Carrier Division’s Kank , which
were to operate in a level-bombing role. Japanese doctrine, as we have seen,
vastly preferred the idea of launching balanced deckload strikes, thereby gaining
the benefits of combined arms. Consequently, a partial strike would probably not
have been considered as an option at 0715. This made perfectly good sense–
Midway wasn’t going anywhere, and there were no indications as yet that there
would be any difficulty in sending off a second strike after Tomonaga landed.
Apparently in anticipation of needing the decks cleared for Tomonaga’s
return, several of the carriers began cycling their CAP fighters. Kaga recovered
three planes from her second watch at 0730, while across the way, S ry
simultaneously brought down all six aircraft from her first two CAP watches. At
0736 Akagi landed another lone Zero, while Hiry brought on board two fighters
at 0740. At the end of these operations, Kid Butai had only fourteen fighters
aloft, down from the thirty-one it had up between 0710 and 0725. Akagi landed
an additional plane at 0740, but it wasn’t a fighter, but rather WO Suzuki
Shigeru’s Type 97 reconnaissance aircraft that had been launched with the
morning strike. This aircraft had patrolled the No. 1 search line, flying almost
due south. It had detected nothing.19

By about 0740, the rearming operations had been under way for about half an
hour. Kaga and Akagi’s first ch tai of Type 97s (nine and six planes,
respectively) were both nearing the end of the rearming process–leaving two
more ch tai to go on each ship. Both ships of CarDiv 1 were also currently
holding a course into the wind in order to bring on board additional fighters.
Suddenly, in the midst of these proceedings, came a bolt from the blue.20 Tone’s
No. 4 scout plane sent the following report: “Sight what appears to be 10 enemy
surface units, in position bearing 10 degrees distance 240 miles from Midway.
Course 150 degrees, speed over 20 knots.” This was a stunning development,
because it stood every assumption of Yamamoto’s plan on its head. Nagumo and
his staff quickly huddled to discuss the implications.
It is important to clarify the exact delivery time of Tone No. 4’s message to
the bridge of Akagi, because this matter has been subjected to great scrutiny.
Nagumo’s composite log indicates that the original signal was transmitted to
Tone at 0728.21 It may well be that Amari had spotted the Americans sometime
before this. It was the practice of Japanese search aircraft to work their way
around the perimeter of an enemy formation before transmitting. Doing so would
hopefully confuse the enemy as to the actual bearing back to the carrier force
once the scout breached radio silence. As a result, we cannot know the exact
time that Amari actually sighted the American force, only when he transmitted.
It has generally been supposed that Amari’s transmission made it up to
Akagi’s bridge sometime before 0745, because Nagumo’s battle report logs an
order at that time to reverse the earlier rearming order and to “leave torpedoes on
those attack planes which have not as yet been changed to bombs.”22 However,
at least one contemporary historian, Dallas Isom, has asserted that Nagumo
actually did not receive Amari’s transmission until 0800 or later.23 As part of
this theory, it has been proposed that Nagumo’s orders to reverse arming may
have been misrecorded in the composite log that forms the basis of the Nagumo
Report. This notion is vaguely supported by Nagumo’s own statement in the
summary section of his report that Tone No. 4’s message was not received until
“about 0800,” and is repeated in other Japanese materials as well.24
However, in this particular case, it is clear that Nagumo did receive Amari’s
transmission about the same time it was logged in the Nagumo Report.
Furthermore, Nagumo thereupon acted on this information with great alacrity.
This is confirmed not by Japanese sources, but by those of the enemy. At 0740
American radio intelligence logged Amari’s third message of his flight thus far,
reporting the initial sighting of the Americans. More important, American
signals intelligence on Hawaii also noted a return transmission from Akagi at
0747, requesting that Tone No. 4 “retain contact.”25 Surprisingly, this signal was
sent in the clear, without being encoded. The impression one gets is that
Nagumo was quite concerned at Amari’s sighting report, enough so that the need
for a speedy response to his scout apparently outweighed any need for signals
security. Thus, the theory that Nagumo experienced a delay in receiving Tone
No. 4’s message cannot be supported. Likewise, it is clear that Nagumo did not
dawdle in his deliberations–upon receiving Amari’s message he immediately
reversed his arming orders and then promptly asked for clarification from his
scout regarding what had been seen.

9-3: 0728 Sighting report from Tone No. 4. The likely search route of Tone No.
4 is indicated, as well as likely nominal visual detection ranges. (Source: Senshi
S sho, p. 309)

However, Isom is quite correct in noting that Tone No. 4’s detection of TF
16 at 0728 was actually one of the few pieces of good luck that Nagumo was to
receive this day.26 On the face of it, this seems an incredible statement. After all,
Tone No. 4’s tardiness in taking off has commonly been held up as one of the
crucial Japanese failures during the battle. Yet, a careful examination of the
American course tracks overlaid by the original Japanese search pattern provides
an important revelation. Had Amari been launched promptly at 0430 and
actually flown his route as prescribed in the original search plan, he would have
flown well south of both American formations on his outbound route and would
not have detected them until the inbound leg. This would have delayed his likely
detection time until at least 0800, meaning that Nagumo, in turn, would probably
not have had an initial report in hand until closer to 0815 or later. Not only that,
but had Amari actually flown his prescribed route after his delayed launch, the
situation would have been made worse still. It was only Amari’s unauthorized
truncation of his search pattern, or perhaps muddled navigation, coupled with his
apparent decision to dogleg north at around 0645 that put him in a position to
make his initial sighting report–badly flawed though it was.

The question then remains: what should Nagumo have done at this time? Finding
the “right” answer to Nagumo’s conundrum–if such even exists–has consumed
endless gallons of ink over the years. Much of it, regrettably, has been spilled to
little purpose. For without having a clear grasp of what the actual state of the
Japanese force was, and what was (and was not) possible for their carriers in the
way of operations, a meaningful analysis of Nagumo’s options cannot be
constructed. Since this was perhaps the critical point in the battle for Nagumo,
it’s worth spending the time to lay these issues out in detail.
Nagumo’s command decisions were governed by three primary constraints.
The first was time. It’s worth remembering at this juncture, reading at our leisure
decades later in the quiet of a library or our own home, that Nagumo had
approximately fifteen minutes to find the correct solution to a set of operational
problems whose outlines–because of the spotty intelligence endemic to this
morning’s actions–he only partially grasped.
The second constraint was the physical arrangement of Akagi’s bridge.
Unlike us, Nagumo wasn’t parked in an easy chair. Indeed, a factor that has been
entirely overlooked until now is the nature of Akagi’s command facilities and the
effect these likely had on the admiral’s ability to reason clearly. Akagi’s bridge
was a tiny trapezoid, some fifteen feet wide and twelve feet long. Containing
little more than a small map table, a chart locker, and several sets of pedestal-
mounted spotting binoculars, it was extraordinarily cramped. In this tiny space
stood at least five officers–Nagumo, Kusaka, Genda, Captain Aoki, and Akagi’s
navigator, Commander Miura. In addition, if Fuchida’s account is to be believed,
several other individuals were present at least some of the time as well–Captain
Oishi (Kusaka’s senior staff member), Lt. Cdr. Ono (staff intelligence officer),
Lt. Cdr. Nishibayashi (staff flag secretary), Commander Masuda (Akagis hik ch
), and Fuchida himself. Of these, Oishi and Ono appear to have been present at
all times. Fuchida apparently came and went at various points during the
morning, and Nishibayashi was likely doing the same. Commander Masuda
would perforce have been spending much of his time on the air-control platform
on the aft end of the island, one level lower, but would have been coming up to
the bridge periodically to report to Captain Aoki on the state of air operations. In
addition, a minimum of several enlisted personnel were required on the bridge
for lookout duty and running messages. Taken together, it’s difficult to imagine
that there were fewer than a dozen individuals in the command spaces almost
constantly. The men had to have been standing practically shoulder to shoulder,
with Nagumo and his staff crammed into the starboard half of the bridge.
Nagumo was unlikely to be able to give or receive candid opinions from his
staff in such a setting. The Japanese as a rule do not like interpersonal
confrontations and tend to shun uncomfortable social situations. Kusaka and
Genda were undoubtedly sensitive to the fact that Nagumo was not as well
versed in naval aviation matters as he needed to be. Yet, in such a setting, they
probably would have been unwilling to make the full extent of their own
knowledge known, because that would risk embarrassing their commander in
front of Captain Aoki and the ship’s crew. Nagumo, for his part, would certainly
not have wanted to reveal his own shortcomings in these matters. In such a
setting, it’s difficult to construct a scenario wherein a truly fluid exchange of
information was possible. Worse yet, there was no place Nagumo and his staff
could retreat for some temporary privacy and still be in proximity to Akagi’s
command and communications equipment–Akagi’s island was simply too small.
These miserable arrangements stand in stark contrast to the facilities on
board WWII American carriers, which were made possible by the American
vessels having much larger islands. On each of the Yorktown-class ships there
was a separate bridge for both the captain and the admiral. The ship’s captain
was not even allowed inside the admiral’s bridge without an invitation from the
flag. As such, an American admiral was free to discuss, debate, or flat out argue
with his staff members behind closed doors. They were shielded from the
distracting hubbub of the ship’s helm and watchmen, allowing them to focus
strictly on the management of the battle. The admiral had a sea cabin located in
the island, allowing him to take naps if needed in order to maintain his alertness.
In addition, American admirals often had their own separate radio facilities
located nearby in the island as well.27 All of these were luxuries Nagumo could
only have dreamed of in the Spartan and completely public setting of Akagi.
It should be noted, too, that during much of the morning, Akagi was either
being directly attacked or was under threat of same. During these periods, the
ship was frequently maneuvering at high speeds. Nagumo had nearly been killed
by a B-26 forty minutes earlier and would shortly witness several new attacks
requiring additional defensive gyrations from his flagship, accompanied by CAP
actions and heavy antiaircraft fire. Akagi was also conducting flight operations
with some frequency. Stuck as he was in a cramped fishbowl, it’s likely Nagumo
spent a fair amount of his time looking out the window at these various
happenings and trying to gauge their importance. In other words, the situation on
the bridge was uncomfortable, noisy, and distracting in the extreme. Kusaka
noted that even the ship’s public address system was barely audible above the
din.28 It’s hardly surprising that in such a setting Nagumo found it difficult to
reason either quickly or clearly.
Nagumo’s third major constraint revolved around his deck operations. A
solution for Nagumo had to proceed on the basis of what was actually possible
on the flight decks. Down through the years, numerous commentators on the
battle have offered facile “solutions” for Nagumo’s conundrum that have
ignored these very real limitations. For instance, why could not the Japanese
have moved their strike force to the flight decks and then rolled the strike aircraft
forward of the crash barriers to warm up while the morning strike was
recovered? Then, after recovering Tomonaga’s aircraft and striking them below,
why couldn’t the strike aircraft (now presumably warmed up and ready for
launch) be rolled back to the rear of the flight deck for spotting?
The answer to questions like these is that some of these operations might
have been technically possible, but the Imperial Navy had never tried doing any
of them before. 0800 on 4 June was a lousy time to try to figure out how.
Militaries fight as they train. They absolutely have to, or they would descend
into utter chaos when confronted by the enormous pressures of battle. Any
attempt to monkey with fundamental activities as complex as deck operations
was guaranteed to lead to confusion, wasted time, and a degraded operational
tempo. This was precisely what the Japanese did not need at this time.
Consequently, whatever Nagumo decided to do needed to be crafted from
operational building blocks that were known commodities to the ship’s crews.
Finally, it must be recognized that even if there was a “right” solution for
the situation Nagumo found himself in, odds were that it would not be easy to
implement, risk free, or even likely to forestall all of the horror and misery
destined to descend on the Japanese this day. At this point in the battle, with the
basic logic of the operational plan revealed as nonsense, the scouting plan in a
shambles, and an unforeseen enemy suddenly on their flank, there was no magic
solution that was going to transform the battle’s outcome. Errors in strategy as
grievous as the Japanese had inflicted on themselves are rarely reversible.
Instead, the best that could really be hoped for was finding an approach whereby
Kid Butai had a reasonable chance of coming away with some of its carriers
intact, or at least having extracted a heavy toll from the Americans.
What, then, did Nagumo have to work with in the way of actionable
information? The answer is: not much. In fact, there were three worrisome
aspects to Tone No. 4’s sighting report. First, the enemy’s position as given by
Amari just didn’t make any sense at all. If Tone No. 4 had indeed sighted
American surface ships where he said he did, then he had encountered them well
to the north of his appointed outbound search route. Indeed, the Americans
appeared to be in the search sector of Chikuma’s No. 5 search line–so why
hadn’t that plane spotted the Americans first? Either Amari was out of place, or
the enemy force wasn’t where he had reported it to be. In fact, Amari’s initial
report placed the Americans some sixty miles north-northeast of their actual
location. Indications are that Nagumo knew that scout aircraft sometimes took
great liberties when “working” a contact and therefore doubted some aspects of
Amari’s report. Yet he had little choice but to take it at face value in terms of the
reported location of the Americans.29
Second, Tone No. 4’s report was miserably bereft of any indication as to
what sort of American warships were out there. “Ten enemy surface units”–just
what did that mean? Within minutes of the message’s receipt, Nagumo sent a
signal back to Tone No. 4 to ascertain the American ship types. Yet, despite the
absence of positive confirmation that a carrier was with the enemy force, the
presence of ten warships of any kind should have been highly suspicious. The
American task force, if it could attack with aircraft, was ideally located to
ambush Nagumo’s carriers. Indeed, as one historian of the battle has noted, there
was no point in any enemy task force being where Amari said it was unless it
could attack with aircraft.30
Third, upon closer examination, the fact that the enemy was steering a
course of 150 degrees was ominous in itself. The prevailing winds of the
morning had been from out of the southeast (although they were presently
shifting around to the northeast in the area near Kid Butai). Such a course track
could well be indicative of an enemy task force launching aircraft.31
It would seem that the significance of some or all of these clues was not lost
on Nagumo and his staff. Kusaka was apparently of the opinion that “there
couldn’t be an enemy force without carriers in the area reported.”32 If Senshi S
sho is any indication, this appears to have been Nagumo’s belief as well.
However–and this is a critical point–both the admiral and his staff came to the
conclusion that whatever enemy force was out there was most probably a suface
force.33 The Americans may have had at least one carrier in attendance with that
force, but it was not viewed as a carrier force per se.
 Despite these ambiguities, there were several pieces of information that
could be used to craft an operational plan. First, it was now clear that the
Americans had a naval force in the area, and prudence would dictate that it be
treated as if it contained a carrier until proven otherwise. Second, given that
Nagumo’s approximate location had been known to the enemy for almost two
hours, he had to assume that any enemy carrier in the neighborhood would be in
receipt of sighting reports. That meant that they could have launched against him
by now. Consequently, Nagumo had every reason to expect further attacks, this
time by carrier aircraft, which could arrive at any time. Third, Kid Butai’s own
geographic position was far from optimal–it was essentially located on the horns
of a dilemma. There was no question that the horn to the northeast (the enemy
naval force) was potentially the more dangerous of the two and would have to be
attacked as soon as was practical. However, as part of his reaction to this new
problem, Nagumo needed to consider maneuvering his force in such a fashion as
to minimize the impact of potentially being caught between two enemies.
Nagumo basically had two options–to try and mount an immediate attack
against the newly detected American force before Tomonaga returned, or to
stand pat and attack after Tomonaga had been recovered. Obviously, all things
being equal, attacking sooner rather than later would generally have been
preferred. However, there were numerous problems with such a course of action.
First of all, Nagumo was rightly cautious about launching a strike against the
enemy force before conclusive ship identifications had been provided to him. He
knew, and everyone on Akagi’s bridge knew, what had happened to Rear
Admiral Takagi when he had been placed in a similar situation just a month
earlier. During the preliminaries at Coral Sea, the commander of CarDiv 5 had
launched a powerful group of his aircraft against an American naval target based
on what had turned out to be faulty spotting information. As a result, instead of
attacking a “carrier,” the Japanese had wasted their strength sinking an American
oiler and destroyer.34
The second obstacle, of course, was that Nagumo had nothing in the way of
strike aircraft ready to go at 0745. No aircraft were currently spotted on his flight
decks. The spate of CAP fighter landings on all four carriers from 0730 to 0740
is proof positive of that–for fighters to have landed at that time the decks
absolutely had to be clear astern. Thus, striking “immediately” could not happen
in less than the time it actually took to spot, warm up, and launch a strike. This
meant a minimum of forty-five minutes from now, that is, at about 0830 at the
earliest.
However, Tomonaga’s returning force was expected to begin orbiting
Nagumo’s carriers around 0815, meaning that an immediate strike would need to
be launched in time for the morning strike force to land. Tomonaga’s group
undoubtedly contained damaged aircraft and wounded airmen. They would have
been airborne for almost four hours by that time and would soon be running low
on fuel, particularly on those aircraft that had suffered battle damage to their
wings.35 It would be imperative to get them down as quickly as possible, and the
carrier hik ch would have been keenly aware of this need. As we will shortly
see, landing the Midway force–including not only the time to recover aircraft,
but also the time needed afterward to clear them off of the flight deck and stow
them below–was a process that could not help but take about twenty minutes per
carrier. In the event, it was actually to take from around 0837 to 0912 to
completely land Tomonaga and his men on all four carriers.
The clever reader will immediately have noticed that since Tomonaga’s
force was not to be recovered until 0912 in any case, could not Nagumo have
anticipated this and intentionally kept Tomonaga orbiting long enough to launch
a full-blown strike with all his aircraft? Working backward from a hypothetical
final recovery time for Tomonaga of around 0915 proves an illuminating
exercise. If all of Tomonaga’s aircraft were to be recovered by then, then they
would need to start recovering by about 0845, or perhaps a bit later. This meant,
in turn, that the reserve strike force would have to be launched (and the decks
clear) by this time. Again working backward, that implies an initial spotting time
of about 0800 at the latest for the reserve strike force, meaning that rearming
would need to be complete by then as well. In other words, if Nagumo was to
launch anything before Tomonaga had to come down, he had to begin his
spotting almost immediately. Time was, indeed, a very precious commodity.
By 0745 one ch tai of Type 97s on Kaga and Akagi had already been
rearmed with 800-kg bombs. Had Nagumo immediately given the order to stop
rearming with bombs at 0745, as it appears he did, he might possibly have
caught the armorers in time to prevent them from beginning the switch out of the
second ch tai’s torpedoes. This would have allowed CarDiv 1 to each begin
spotting two of their three ch tai of torpedo-armed aircraft by about 0800. But in
no case would Nagumo have been able to send up his entire reserve force of
Type 97s before Tomonaga had to land–the ch tai on each carrier that had
already been rearmed with Type 80 bombs simply couldn’t be switched back in
time.
In terms of force, then, the difference between spotting now or waiting for
the kank squadrons to be completely rearmed essentially boiled down to about
fifteen aircraft. If Nagumo waited, his available forces would be as follows:

Akagi: eighteen kank (three six-plane ch tai)

 Kaga. twenty-six or twenty-seven kank (three nine-plane ch tai)36
Hiry : eighteen kanbaku (both of her nine-plane ch tai)
S ry : sixteen kanbaku37 (both of her nine-plane ch tai)
Total: seventy-eight or seventy-nine attack aircraft

Conversely, if Nagumo decided to spot immediately, the strike assets we

can be reasonably sure were available were:

Akagi: twelve kank (two of her total of three six-plane ch tai)

Kaga. eighteen kank (two of her total of three nine-plane ch tai)38
Hiry : eighteen kanbaku (both of her nine-plane ch tai)
S ry : sixteen kanbaku (both of her nine-plane ch tai)
Total: sixty-four attack aircraft

Clearly, even without the full torpedo plane complements from Akagi and
Kaga, Nagumo had the potential to launch a powerful, well-balanced strike
package. The sixty-four attack aircraft he had available immediately were easily
capable of sinking two American carriers outright if properly employed. In fact,
this group of aircraft represented more than twice the aggregate firepower that
the Japanese would actually manage to throw at the American carriers during the
day’s later actions. However, such a strike would have broken the organizational
symmetry of CarDiv 1’s kank groups by leaving a ch tai apiece of semi-armed
planes sitting in both Akagi and Kaga’s hangars, a move that no doctrinaire
Japanese commander would have viewed with a favorable eye.
A second alternative, and one which better preserved the fleet’s
organizational integrity, was to go with a more-limited immediate strike and just
send out CarDiv 2’s thirty-four kanbaku. This would have left Nagumo with
another strike force in the process of arming (CarDiv 1’s Kank ) that could be
launched shortly thereafter, and with Tomonaga’s group to follow up later in the
morning after they were recovered. The downside of this approach, though, was
twofold. First, it reduced the power of the initial strike by reducing the sheer
number of aircraft attacking. Second, it lowered the theoretical effectiveness of
the strike by presenting the enemy with a one-dimensional threat, that is, no
torpedo aircraft coming in at low altitude to stretch the enemy CAP while the
dive-bombers attacked. Doctrine frowned on both of these sacrifices.
Most likely, these were the only two options Nagumo and his staff
considered in terms of launching an immediate attack. From the standpoint of
postwar carrier operations, though, there were probably several more
possibilities available to Kid Butai. If the enemy’s southeast course heading
was indicative of their conducting flight operations, then Kid Butai needed to
consider its defensive needs as well. In light of this requirement and the
technical and doctrinal imperatives at work, an approach that suggests itself is
one wherein CarDivs 1 and 2 operated independently. Fuchida suggested
something similar in the postmortem analysis of his account, where he advocated
attacking with only a single carrier division at a time while holding the other in
reserve.39 However, it is clear that in making this suggestion, Fuchida, like
Nagumo and his staff, was strictly thinking in terms of how best to deliver
attacks against the enemy. The fleet’s defense didn’t figure into Fuchida’s
calculus, nor (apparently) that of any Japanese officer this day. Admiral
Yamaguchi, too, was opposed to operating independently for the moment,40
although, as we shall see, as the day wore on, his CarDiv 2 operated in an
increasingly detached manner from CarDiv 1.
A slightly different approach might have been to effect an actual split along
functional lines, with one carrier division attending to the fleet’s offensive
chores, the other to the defensive. This is precisely what modern carrier divisions
often do.41 This same concept, in fact, had already been cooked up by the
Yokosuka squadron but had yet to be formally implemented in the Navy’s
doctrine. If such were attempted, the logical division of labor would have had
CarDiv 2 launching an immediate attack against the Americans, while CarDiv 1
was tasked with air defense. This would have conferred a number of advantages
on the Japanese.
From an offensive standpoint, using only CarDiv 2’s dive-bombers for an
initial attack obviously meant that the force would not benefit from combined
arms. Nevertheless, it placed the attack force in very capable hands. It was
commonly acknowledged that CarDiv 2’s strike units were the best of the best.
With the famed Commander Egusa leading the counterstrike, the Japanese could
be confident of scoring against the enemy. This approach also obviated the need
to shut down all of Kid Butai’s flight decks simultaneously upon Tomonaga’s
arrival. Akagi and Kaga’s strike planes could have been recovered almost
immediately, thereby keeping only Hiry ’s and S ry ’s morning strike planes
circling, while Egusa’s force was spotted and launched.
An even more esoteric approach might have attempted roughly the same
functionalized arrangement of offensive/defensive duties, but with S ry and
Akagi designated as the CAP carriers, and Hiry and Kaga the attack carriers. In
this way, a total of thirty-six strike aircraft (eighteen kanbaku and eighteen Kank
) could be spotted immediately. In other words, this arrangement would not
only split Kid Butai into two roles, but also would split the divisional structure
in allocating those roles. The benefit of such an approach would be in allowing
Kid Butai to launch an immediate strike package that also benefited from
combined arms.
However, it is clear that Nagumo and his staff were hamstrung by Japanese
naval doctrine in terms of considering such options. In fact, it is unlikely that
either of the “functionalized” approaches outlined above would have even
occurred to them, particularly since the fruits of Yokosuka’s research had yet to
be harvested. In 1942 Japanese doctrine was strictly offensive, and its
prescription for practically any tactical situation was to attack the enemy with a
full-strength combined arms strike–period. Nagumo’s needs for a more flexible
approach were therefore negated by the Imperial Navy’s doctrinal emphasis on
mass. In the end, as he saw it, he had only one option–to attack with everything
he had, regardless of how long it took to make the necessary arrangements.
Regardless of the composition of the strike force, another question that
needed solving was the matter of providing a fighter escort for the attack.
Fuchida later asserted that providing Zeros in the 0800 time frame would have
proven impossible, as the second wave fighters had already been sent aloft to
reinforce the CAP. This meant that CarDiv 2’s kanbaku would have to go in
unescorted, a prospect that no one relished.42 This factor has been cited by many
postwar scholars as being a determining factor in Nagumo’s decision.43
A detailed examination of Kid Butai’s flight records, though, reveals an
entirely different situation. As mentioned, the four carrier hik ch had
anticipated Tomonaga’s return and apparently tried to proactively manage the
impending shutdown of the flight decks by ratcheting down the CAP from about
0730. As a result, by about 0800 Kid Butai had the following fighters available
in the hangars: Akagi, twelve; Kaga, eighteen, Hiry , eight, S ry , nine; for a
total of forty-seven. Thirty-five of these Zeros had been on board their respective
ships for at least half an hour and could thus be reasonably assured of being
fueled and munitioned. This was a powerful escort force, especially given the
demonstrable superiority of Japanese fighter aircraft and pilots over their
American counterparts.
However, committing this body of fighters en masse to a strike against the
Americans meant that Kid Butai would have almost no fighter reserve to
reinforce the CAP, which by now was down to just nine fighters. If Nagumo
chose to launch with both CarDiv 1 and 2, this rather pitiful CAP would have to
stay aloft for the duration of the spotting and launch process. Thereafter, they
would need to be replenished and reinforced. Clearly, the number of fighters that
would escort this second strike of the morning would have to be fewer than the
thirty-six sent out with Tomonaga. However, it is equally clear that Nagumo
could have provided his force with at least some escort. Indeed, an escort of a
dozen Zeros could have easily been sent, and twice that many would probably
not have been out of reach.
The final factor Nagumo had to consider was how to maneuver his force.
Kid Butai currently found itself between two enemies. Worse, Nagumo only
really knew the location of one of these foes–Midway itself. Until Tone No. 4’s
position report was independently confirmed, he was dealing in vagaries as far
as the American fleet was concerned. Knowing that he wanted to attack the
American carrier, it made good sense to move away from Midway for the time
being. Indeed, it may have even made sense to temporarily move away from the
American naval force as well. In retrospect, Nagumo’s subsequent decision to
change course to the northeast and close the American force without first having
sound knowledge of its composition and exact whereabouts was ill conceived. It
not only increased his danger from the American carriers, but it also had the
effect of leaving Midway near to hand upon his southern flank.
Nagumo was certainly well within his rights to maneuver freely. Frankly,
by 0800 it should have been clear to everyone on Akagi’s bridge that
Yamamoto’s battle plan needed to be summarily consigned to the ash can.
Absolutely nothing was going according to plan this morning. Yet Nagumo still
possessed some important advantages. For one thing, Japanese attack aircraft
were somewhat longer ranged than their American counterparts. Taking a
northwest course would have fulfilled his need to strike while employing his
longer reach. He knew that the weather to his north wasn’t good. If he could get
back underneath the cold front he had come through on the previous day, he
could use it to shield his movements. From there it might have been possible to
work around the Americans’ northern flank. Nagumo might have suspected that
the Americans were covering this quadrant with their own search aircraft (as
indeed they were), but at least from that direction he could deliver attacks
against them without fear of direct interference from Midway, which would be
far to the south of where Nagumo would have hoped to develop the follow-on
battle. Furthermore, he also could have used the time he spent maneuvering
northward to call for reinforcements (in the form of Kakuta’s Second Mobile
Force) and start bringing them down from the Aleutians.
Students of the battle will note that withdrawing to the north or northwest in
the 0800–0900 time frame most likely would not have resulted in Kid Butai
being missed altogether by the incoming American strike aircraft. Enterprise’s
dive-bomber group eventually overhauled Kid Butai from the southwest and
might also have detected a force lying directly to their north. Likewise, Kid
Butai might have encountered Hornet’s strike force as well. Thus, any maneuver
Nagumo attempted in that direction would probably have exposed the fleet to a
strike of some sort. However, this would potentially have had its benefits.
Instead of facing attack groups from both Yorktown and Enterprise coming in
simultaneously from several points on the compass, Kid Butai might have
encountered these strikes sequentially, and from a single direction, thereby
making detection and interception much easier. The Japanese CAP had already
demonstrated that it could deal with a single-vector threat if it was given
sufficient warning.
However, maneuvering in this fashion would cause problems, in that it
necessarily meant throwing the entire operation’s timetable completely off kilter.
This would undoubtedly have drawn fire from Yamamoto. Even if he were
inclined to do so, Nagumo would have needed to begin coordinating not only the
activities of his own vessels, but also helping reorient the various invasion and
support forces as well. There was, in other words, a formidable level of “plan
inertia” that would need to be overcome at an operational level. It wouldn’t have
been enough for Nagumo to simply radio Admiral Tanaka and say, “Stay where
you are and I’ll let you know when it’s safe to invade.” Any hint of discarding
the commander in chief’s precious timetable would need to be backed up by
mental toughness, sound logic, and the ability to supply Combined Fleet staff
with reasonable estimates of when the job would be completed.
Taking all together, and admittedly operating with the benefit of hindsight,
the “right” answer to Nagumo’s conundrum probably should have emphasized
maneuver, offensive speed in preference to mass, and passive damage control.
With fifteen minutes in which to act, he didn’t really have time to implement
anything terribly fancy. But he could have helped himself immensely by
immediately spotting every strike airplane in his hangars, whether they were
armed or not, and launching them at the Americans. The sixty-four armed
aircraft he had in hand were perfectly capable of doing enormous damage to his
enemy. And by emptying his hangars, he removed the single greatest danger to
his carriers–the presence of fueled and armed aircraft within them.
However, even as Nagumo was considering these options, a new hurdle
emerged. At 0753 Kirishima was seen to lay down smoke–another American air
raid was coming in. As we shall see, within a matter of just a few minutes,
Nagumo would be under assault yet again. Launching an attack before
Tomonaga returned was now going to be doubly difficult, in that he would need
to spot aircraft in the face of an ongoing American attack. No right-minded hik
ch was going to be happy spotting aircraft while the force was being bombed.
With the ships engaged in high-speed maneuvering, pushing aircraft across an
exposed flight deck and into their spots would have been hideously dangerous.
Plane handlers could be maimed or crushed by an aircraft that got out of control–
a very real possibility if the flight deck suddenly canted to one side. In fact, one
of Zuikaku’s plane handlers had been killed under similar circumstances at Coral
Sea, and a plane lost overboard as a result.44 Furthermore, having the armed and
fueled aircraft on deck directly exposed them to strafing attacks. Pressing home
a spot, and then launching under such circumstances, would require both steady
nerves and a steely resolve. Yet, a truly insightful commander would have
pointed out to his balking captains and hik ch that keeping armed and fueled
aircraft inside the ship during an American attack was, if anything, more
dangerous than getting them airborne as quickly as possible, even in the face of
enemy fire.45

The bottom line is that Nagumo chose not to attempt an attack at this time, most
likely for a host of reasons. In the first place, he probably judged that trying to
shoehorn an immediate strike in before Tomonaga landed was probably going to
be too difficult to deal with, particularly with a new American attack rolling in.
He might also have been concerned, too, that Tone No. 4’s position report
appeared to be bogus, meaning that further scouting work would be necessary to
locate the enemy.
Furthermore, while we know in hindsight that the fighter situation was not
as dire as Fuchida later made it out to be, both Genda and Kusaka were
apparently worried about finding enough escorts for the attack force at this
time.46 They may not have known how far along the rearming activities had
progressed within Akagi’s hangars, nor what the status was of the fighters aboard
the other ships in Kid Butai. And while it is not documented in the available
sources, it is likely that both Genda and Kusaka disliked the idea of distorting
the symmetry of Kid Butai’s air groups by sending out a partial strike unit.
Breaking the attack squadrons apart at this time meant trying to figure out where
to integrate the remainder into strikes later in the day, if indeed the physical
constraints of the force’s flight decks would allow the leftovers to be spotted
with Tomonaga’s force later on. A partial strike now portended more mess and
less efficiency later.
It must be emphasized, too, that Nagumo’s course of action was doctrinally
correct. It favored mass and held out the promise of a fully integrated strike.
Right now, the choices available to Nagumo were all tough calls between
various half measures. But by waiting a bit, he might not have to make the tough
choices and would be able to strike with his full force. Many critics of his
performance–Japanese and American alike–have neglected to acknowledge that
he at least acted in a fashion that was doctrinally coherent.
Indeed, if Nagumo had actually been fortunate enough to attack with Kid
Butai’s complete reserve strike force, it would have unquestionably been the
most powerful, best-coordinated strike launched by either side during the day.
Unlike their American counterparts, Japanese torpedo aircraft were fully capable
of delivering telling attacks. Furthermore, the Japanese were well versed in
coordinating simultaneous dive-bomber and torpedo strikes against moving
targets. Any American flattop on the receiving end of such an assault would
have found itself in the most dreadful peril. Indeed, a full strike by all four of
Nagumo’s flight decks had the firepower to sink every American carrier in the
battle, had they been caught operating in proximity.
However, the most important factor is that Nagumo probably felt little real
urgency to strike at this moment. Hitting the American task force was clearly the
highest priority mission at hand. Having only sighted ten warships, though, he
apparently judged the enemy to be rather weak. Indeed, it was possible, albeit
unlikely, that a stray American carrier had simply been in the area, delivering
aircraft or some such, and had moved toward Midway as a result of the actions
on 3 June. No matter where it came from, there were no real indications at the
moment that Kid Butai would have any problem attacking it in due time. Given
the very real difficulties inherent in trying to put together a strike force before
Tomonaga’s imminent homecoming, the path of least resistance was simply to
accept the slight delay in counterattacking. Nagumo would use the time gained
during recovery operations to complete the rearming of CarDiv 1’s kank and
then launch a full-blown strike force later in the morning.
This perception of American weakness clearly influenced his subsequent
decision to close the enemy. Indeed, before the strength of American airpower
made itself calamitously known, Nagumo would issue orders to his fleet at 0930
that his intention was to destroy the enemy in a “daylight engagement,” in other
words a surface action.47 Apparently, Nagumo judged the American fleet to be
weak enough that if need be he could dispatch it with his own rather light
screening forces (albeit stiffened by two fast battleships). Such an order would
telegraph the unconscious message to the Japanese forces that there was no need
to wait until after dark to employ the Imperial Navy’s vaunted night battle
techniques against this particular enemy. They could be mopped up right now, in
broad daylight. Thus, for the next three hours, Nagumo treated this force as an
enemy that was first to be attacked from the air, and then annihilated by his
destroyers and battleships on the surface.
Much like his earlier decision to authorize attacking Midway with his
reserve aircraft, Nagumo’s decision to delay attacking the American task force
has been mercilessly criticized. Fuchida remarked:

Looking back on this critical moment, which ultimately was to decide

the battle, I can easily realize what a difficult choice faced the Force
Commander. Yet, even now, I find it hard to justify the decision he took.
Should he not have sacrificed every other consideration in favor of sending
the dive bombers immediately against the enemy ships? Should he not have
dispatched the torpedo bombers also, even though armed with bombs? He
could have launched them to orbit until enough fighters could be recovered
refueled and launched again to provide escort. The planes back from
Midway could have been kept in the air at least until the bombers had
cleared. Damaged planes, if unable to remain aloft any longer, could have
crash-landed in the sea, where destroyers would have rescued the crews.
“Wise after the event,” the saying goes. Still, there is no question that
it would have been wiser to launch our dive bombers immediately, even
without fighter protection. In such all-or-nothing carrier warfare, no other
choice was admissible. Even the risk of sending unprotected level bombers
should have been accepted as necessary in this emergency. Their fate would
probably have been the same as that of the unescorted American planes
which had attacked us a short while before, but just possibly they might
have saved us from the catastrophe we were about to suffer.48

Fuchida’s comments require careful analysis, because they contain

important grains of truth, but also some stunning misstatements. Fuchida was
correct to say that if at all possible it was desirable to attack the Americans
quickly. This was clearly a time when The Book needed to be tossed aside in
favor of haste. He was also right in pointing out that the fewer planes in the
hangars, the better. Whether Fuchida truly apprehended this during the battle, or
only upon reflection afterward, the truth remains that the best thing that Nagumo
could have done to augment his force’s survivability was to get as many aircraft
out of his hangars and up in the air as possible, whether they had anything useful
to do up there or not.
Fuchida was wrong, however, on three crucial points. First, of course, was
his deliberate neglect to mention that Nagumo could actually launch nothing at
0745, because all of the force’s reserve strike aircraft were in the hangars.
Second, whatever the need for a speedy attack, that imperative absolutely had to
be balanced against the need to preserve the combat power of the force as a
whole. In other words, Nagumo needed to minimize unnecessary losses (through
deliberate ditchings and so on) among Tomonaga’s force, if at all possible. Kid
Butai was now confronted by not one, but two enemies. Without aircraft,
Nagumo’s carriers could neither attack nor defend themselves. Responding to a
suddenly augmented estimate of enemy firepower with a knee-jerk reaction that
deliberately subtracted from one’s own inventory of this vital commodity hardly
made good sense. In a war that was to be filled with examples of needless
sacrifices of Japanese forces, Nagumo is to be applauded for electing to preserve
Tomonaga’s assets at this juncture, rather than simply squandering them.
Instead, he has been unfairly pilloried for his prudence.
However, the most important criticism of Fuchida’s comments stems from
his ignoring a vital piece of information that his postwar account should have
had ready to hand. What Fuchida almost certainly knew in 1951, but Nagumo
could only suspect on 4 June 1942, was that even as the commander of Kid
Butai was mulling his options on the bridge of Akagi, the bulk of the American
carrier aircraft that would ultimately destroy his force were either already taking
to the air, or were shortly to do so. In a nutshell, whether or not Nagumo
launched a counterstrike before Tomonaga returned, he was still likely to be on
the receiving end of a very heavy American attack at some point in the morning.

It will be recalled that Admiral Fletcher had ordered Spruance to attack the
Japanese as soon as practicable, and Spruance had duly headed southwest to
close on Kid Butai’s reported position. He had set 0700 as the time to launch
both Hornet’s and Enterprise’s air groups, and precisely at the appointed hour
they had begun doing so. However, their subsequent flight operations were
notable for a lack of coordination and poor organization. No plan was in place to
use the two carrier’s air groups en masse. Rather, American doctrine dictated
that each carrier’s group was an independent entity. Furthermore, Spruance’s air
adviser, Cdr. Miles R. Browning, neglected to issue detailed instructions to
Hornet, thus leaving it to her skipper, Captain Marc A. Mitscher, to issue orders
to his air group as to their outbound route. Furthermore, the method by which the
two American carriers spotted their respective strike forces was left strictly up to
their captains as well.
Both skippers understandably wished to strike with every attack plane at
their disposal. However, given the number of aircraft they would send up, they
would need to first launch one portion of the strike, respot the decks, and then
launch the remainder. During the respotting process, the aircraft already aloft
would need to circle overhead, waiting for the complete strike to come up.
Capt. George D. Murray, Enterprise’s skipper, chose to send up CAP
fighters and his longer-ranged SBDs in his first spot, followed by his shorter-
ranged fighters and TBDs in the second package. This plan made a good deal of
sense, in that it kept the shorter-ranged aircraft on deck until last, thus providing
them with the best possible amount of actual flying time toward the objective. In
the event, though, because of mechanical issues and other problems, Enterprise
took an immensely long time to spot her second deck load after the first was
launched. Furthermore, in the middle of the protracted spot, TF 16 had become
aware of Tone No. 4’s presence, in the form of its intercepted 0740 transmission
to Nagumo, which to Enterprise’s radio intelligence officer looked
conspicuously like a sighting report. Desperate to get things moving, Spruance
informed Enterprise’s dive-bombers to proceed on their assigned mission
without waiting for the follow-up fighter escort or TBDs. Worse yet, when these
second-wave aircraft were finally launched, they chose a different outbound
route from the dive-bombers. Thus, Enterprise’s strike had already been split
into two components, each of which was proceeding independently.
Hornet’s performance was even worse. Captain Mitscher, despite his
experience, inexplicably decided to position his fighters in the front half of his
first spot, followed by the SBDs and then half of the TBDs. Once these aircraft
were aloft, the remainder of the torpedo planes would be spotted and launched.
Forty-five minutes later, this is exactly what had transpired, leaving the fighters
with just that much less combat radius. Hornet’s strike departed at 0755.
The subsequent movements of Hornet’s air group remain somewhat
mysterious to this day. Some accounts maintain that the air group commander,
Lt. Cdr. Stanhope C. Ring, flew a southwest course after being launched, and
thereby ultimately missed Kid Butai by flying to the south of it. However, we
hew to the interpretation that Hornet’s group actually flew almost due west from
their launch point and thereby flew to the north of Nagumo. Why Ring made the
decision to take his group west, rather than southwest toward the location of the
initial PBY spotting reports, remains unclear. But the result was that only a
single squadron of Hornet’s air group would ultimately get into the fight this
morning, and then only as the result of the most bizarre circumstances.
The contrast between these rather benighted deck operations and those of
the Japanese could not be more striking. Whereas Tomonaga’s 108 aircraft had
taken just seven minutes to send aloft, Hornet and Enterprise labored for an hour
to launch their own strikes, which totaled only eight aircraft more–twenty
fighters, sixty-eight dive-bombers, and twenty-nine torpedo aircraft, for a total of
117.49 Not only that, but instead of getting a coordinated strike from their two
carriers, they had gotten three separate air groups heading in three different
directions. As events transpired, some of the aircraft that set off together would
not stay together long, leading to a further dispersion of power. Thus, the
American aircraft, even if they reached the Japanese fleet at all, would be forced
to attack in squadron-sized parcels. Nevertheless, by around 0800, the fates of
Nagumo and Kid Butai were already sealed to a certain degree.50 The
Americans had a fairly good idea of where the Japanese lay, and they had
managed to put enough firepower in the air to be reasonably assured of causing
the Japanese force great harm–if they could find Kid Butai.
This fact places the questions surrounding Nagumo’s options in a
completely different light. Whether Kid Butai struck back before or
immediately after Tomonaga came home to roost, the Americans had still taken
the initiative away from the Japanese. If Nagumo was to have attacked the
Americans in time to forestall their strikes against him, he needed information
from Tone No. 4, or somebody else, much earlier in the morning. In fact,
working backward from when the American carriers launched their respective
strikes, it is possible to determine when spotting information ceased to be
actionable in a preemptive sense.
The slowest Japanese strike aircraft, the Type 97 Kank , cruised at 138
knots. They would take about an hour and a half to cover the roughly two
hundred miles to the American task force.51 But in the best of circumstances,
attacking even the Yorktown, which (as we shall see) would start sending her
own planes aloft at 0838, meant that Nagumo would have had to have his own
aircraft in the air by around 0715 in order to hit the Americans first. That, in
turn, means that Nagumo needed to have begun spotting his strike no later than
0630. Worse yet, hitting Enterprise and Hornet before they began launching
would have required having a strike in the air no later than 0530. Thus, by the
0745–0800 time period, when Nagumo was actually debating the information he
had in his hands, the Americans could no longer be forestalled. Nothing Nagumo
could do at this point could entirely unmake the morning’s events.
This, in turn, shifts a hefty share of the day’s blame away from Tone No. 4
and onto Chikuma’s No. 1 aircraft, which had flown the No. 5 search line. As
bad as Petty Officer Amari’s subsequent navigation would prove, the critical
reconnaissance failure really lay here. Chikuma No. 1 was the only plane that
could have gotten timely information into Nagumo’s hands. Had this plane
flown its route correctly, and closer to the surface, it almost certainly should
have detected the American task force between 0615 and 0630, that is, within
the time frame (barely) needed to act decisively. Its failure cost Nagumo more
than an hour of reaction time. It was this failure, not Tone No. 4’s late launch,
that set in motion a veritable avalanche of negative tactical consequences.
Chikuma No. 1’s gaffe was indicative of a larger failure, however, for it
was here that the paltry number of aircraft devoted to the morning’s search really
hurt Nagumo’s chances. No properly conceived search program should have
been completely compromised by the failure of a single asset. There should have
been more aircraft devoted to the search. Some would point to Chikuma No. 1’s
inability to sight the Americans as somehow supporting the notion that the
weather was so bad on Nagumo’s eastern flank that no number of additional
scouting assets in the area would have rectified the situation.52 However, this
makes no sense. The failure of one scout plane in one location, for whatever
reasons of local weather conditions, poor navigation, and/or improper scouting
technique, says nothing about the odds of another nearby plane–in slightly
different weather, with different sight lines, and performing its search in a
disciplined manner–to detect the same enemy. There can be no denying that
more search assets would have significantly bettered Nagumo’s odds. But
Japanese doctrine, and its offensive-minded outlook, precluded this. As it was,
Genda’s reconnaissance scheme was essentially a roll of the dice, and Nagumo
had crapped out hours ago.
10

Trading Blows–0800–0917

Kirishima’s warning smoke at 0753 presaged the arrival of a series of nearly

continuous enemy attacks over the next forty minutes delivered by three separate
American formations. The first was a group of sixteen dive-bombers under
Major Lofton R. Henderson that were approaching Kid Butai from the
southeast. His Marine pilots, members of VMSB-241, had taken off just after
Midway’s B-26s and TBFs. However, owing to the slower cruising speed of his
SBDs, as well as having taken a more northerly course, they had been later in
spotting the Japanese force.
Henderson’s men were some of the rawest fliers on the American side of
the battle. Most of them had never flown an SBD until a few days previously,
and more than half had only been with the unit for a few days. In their
commander’s opinion, his unit did not yet have the skills needed to execute a
true dive-bombing attack. Instead, Henderson led his flight in from an altitude of
9,500 feet, hoping to survive long enough to execute a shallower glide-bombing
attack against the two flattops he saw on the port side of the Japanese formation–
the wildly maneuvering carriers of CarDiv 2. Henderson’s men had just started
their gradual descent toward the target when the Zeros hit them.
The Japanese CAP fighters tore into Henderson’s formation with merciless
precision. Akagi’s Lieutenant Ibusuki and his two remaining 6th Ku pilots were
joined by Hiry ’s3rd patrol, a pair of Zeros led by WO Kodama Yoshimi, as
well as S ry ’s3rd patrol shotai, under the redoubtable Lieutenant Fujita. This
was, in fact, the entirety of the Japanese CAP, as Kaga’s four remaining fighters
were already lining up for recovery. Nine fighters wasn’t much with which to
tackle a full squadron of enemy dive-bombers, but, in the event, they proved
deadly effective.
Six U.S. aircraft went flaming down into the ocean almost at once. Major
Henderson was one of the first, trying to hold his plane and his formation steady
until the end. Henderson’s death would lead to his name being used for a
captured airfield on Guadalcanal, which would earn one of the most glorious
names in American military history. However, there was nothing glorious about
the predicament his surviving men found themselves in. They had little choice
but to hold formation and continuing boring in toward the target, firing back as
best they could. Somehow in the process, the American radio gunners managed
to send Hiry ’s Kodama to his demise.

10-1: Attacks against ainst Kid Butai: 0753–0815.

Finally, Henderson’s wingman (Capt. Richard E. Fleming) led the shredded
squadron into their glide-bombing attacks. Below them, Gunnery Lieutenant
Nagayasu on Hiry again ordered his batteries into action, adding to the general
noise and confusion and making the American attack runs all the more difficult.
They were coming in from all sides now, their formation shattered. The 25-mm
mounts that lined Hiry ’s flight deck spat out strands of incongruously pretty
tracer shells. To the Japanese watching from Akagi, it was obvious that the
Americans were poorly trained–no self-respecting dive-bomber pilot would have
attempted to bag a carrier with such an anemic attack. Glide bombing was the
worst of both worlds. It eschewed the slender advantage of hugging the deck,
while accruing neither of the twin benefits gained from a high-angle attack–
accuracy and near-invulnerability to return fire. Yet, the results of the American
attack were spectacular, if utterly ineffective.
 Despite the hell they had just come through, Fleming’s men managed to
bracket Hiry with numerous near misses between 0808 and 0812, some as close
as fifty meters from the ship. These bombs raised such waterspouts that
Yamaguchi’s flagship was momentarily hidden from the eyes of the rest of the
fleet. Nagayasu and his men in the gun tubs were drenched with seawater. Yet in
the end, Hiry emerged unscathed from the gray-white plumes that had erupted
around her. Once again the Americans had paid prohibitively for no result, and
the Japanese combat air patrol thereupon hounded the surviving SBDs out of the
area.
One portion of this rather sorry episode has been overlooked, namely, that
even against poorly trained American pilots attacking in a highly vulnerable
fashion, Hiry ’s antiaircraft failed to account for a single enemy aircraft that we
know of, despite Nagayasu’s own belief that his “very fierce” fire had been
responsible for the Americans’ poor aim.1 Hiry should have been able to bring
a half dozen five-inch and a dozen or so 25-mm barrels to bear on almost any
broadside bearing. This was hardly an insignificant amount of firepower. Yet she
apparently hit nothing. Indeed, American strafing killed more of her crewmen
than she claimed in return. If this was how Japanese AA performed against
opponents who were hardly the varsity, it did not bode well if the Americans’
“A-team” should suddenly appear.
Yet, for all the Japanese knew, this was the enemy’s best. They had seen
three different American attacks thus far, the last of which had been flown by
carrier-type aircraft (although the Japanese did not know that Henderson’s
squadron was land based). Yet, in each case, the performance of the Americans
had been subpar. They were clearly brave, but they had come in dumb–
unescorted and attacking poorly. If these were the same caliber of pilots who had
managed to send Sh kaku limping back to the yard, then CarDiv 5’s lowly status
within Kid Butai was well deserved.
However, almost simultaneously with Henderson’s gallant but futile effort,
another American attack began materializing. At 0754 Japanese lookouts spotted
aircraft at high altitude, which quickly revealed themselves to be a dozen four-
engined American bombers. This was the B-17 force of Lt. Col. Walter C.
Sweeney, which had been sent aloft at 0430 to attack Tanaka’s transports, only
to be redirected north by Midway as soon as the Japanese carriers had been
detected. They were very high up, over 20,000 feet. The Zeros were going to
have a devil of a time reaching them all the way up there. Not only that, but the
entirety of the CAP was already engaged in repulsing Henderson’s attack in any
case.

10-2: S ry evading B-17 attack at high speed. Putting the helm hard over was a
standard Japanese technique for avoiding attacks. In the case of the B-17s, the
Japanese could wait until the planes had dropped their weapons before
committing to an evasive maneuver. S ry had a reputation for quick response
to the helm and rather violent handling, because of her inclined twin rudder
configuration. Note the complete absence of planes on deck. (Naval Historical
Center)

The bombers split into three groups and went after Akagi, S ry , and Hiry
in an almost leisurely fashion. The Japanese began banging away with their
heavy AA guns, but the Americans were never in any great danger. Having
attacked Tanaka’s invasion force the previous day from medium altitudes,
Sweeney’s men, upon further reflection, had judged their approach rather too
low. This morning, against more heavily armed warships complete with fighter
cover, they had decided to stay higher up. It was a sound decision, as the
Japanese antiaircraft fire was none too good. The Americans noted that the
Japanese shells seemed to be fused to detonate at the right altitude, but
consistently exploded well behind them.2
Altitude, however, worked both ways. Down below, the Japanese captains
watched as the bombers came into their runs. Coolly, they waited until each
element had dropped, then put the helm over into radical evasive maneuvers.
Whether the Americans dropped promptly or even on target was largely
irrelevant. The pirouetting warships below still had a good thirty seconds’ worth
of air time to play with, meaning that they could be a quarter of a mile in nearly
any direction when the bombs finally landed. Even by dropping a “stick” of a
dozen or more 500-lb weapons at a time, the odds of securing a hit weren’t good.
Not only that, but the cloud cover over Kid Butai frustrated several of their
attacks, forcing some aircraft to make numerous runs before finally dropping.
Yet, the Americans almost got lucky. In the course of the twenty-minute-long
series of runs, both Hiry and S ry were bracketed by near misses, to the
consternation of the Japanese. In the end, though, the American heavies scored
no damage.

In the midst of all this mayhem, at 0758 Tone No. 4 sent a message apprising
Nagumo that the enemy task force had changed course to 080. Nagumo sent a
terse communiqué back: “Advise ship types.” Course information was not what
was required at this point–he needed the enemy force’s composition as quickly
as possible. It seems almost certain that Nagumo signaled to S ry around this
time to make her special reconnaissance aircraft ready for launch. This was a
perfect mission for the new D4Y, where its great speed could hopefully make up
for some of the force’s lost time.
Given that both Henderson’s and the B-17 attacks were getting under way
by 0800, the men of Akagi had been somewhat incredulous to observe Kaga
holding her course into the wind long enough to bring on board the last of her
four CAP fighters.3 Kid Butai was vulnerable, with only nine fighters overhead.
Not surprisingly, Akagi had already been warming up a replacement shotai.
Kaga, as soon as she had recovered her foursome, immediately spotted another
seven for warm-up and launch, even as the B-17s droned away overhead. In fact,
intermittent CAP launches from all the carriers would punctuate the breaks in the
action–clearly, each carrier’s captain was feeling the need to augment the CAP.
Whether they were operating independently or under orders from the flagship,
we cannot know. But the net effect was that the flight decks were in near-
constant use by small groups of aircraft at this time.

10-3: Akagi evading attack by B-17s. Already in a shallow starboard turn, she
has just executed a much harder turn to starboard. The broken cloud cover over
the Japanese force is evident in this photograph. The destroyer following Akagi
is probably Nowaki, her plane guard destroyer. No fighters are evident on deck,
and her forward elevator is in the down position. Akagi launched fighters at 0808
and again at 0832. It is likely that this photograph was taken immediately after
the launch of the first sh tai, and that the carrier was in the process of bringing
up the second to the flight deck. Note also the large hinomaru (Rising Sun
emblem) on her flight deck forward. (Naval Historical Center)

Such was the spectacle that Tomonaga and his returning force beheld when Kid
Butai heaved into view at about 0805. On the northern horizon ahead of them,
their carriers bobbed and weaved beneath the American heavy bombers. Hiry
described a series of “S”-shaped maneuvers as sticks of bombs landed on either
side. S ry was resorting to the simple expedient of putting the helm hard over
to starboard and carving an enormous donut in the ocean.
Seeing the retreating American SBDs from Henderson’s savaged flight
coming toward them on the deck, one of Tomonaga’s Akagi Zeros took this
opportunity to join the CAP. He was joined by six of Kaga’s kanbaku as well.4
The Type 99 was a maneuverable airplane once it had shed its bomb, and some
of CarDiv 1’s drivers may have judged that they could take on their opposite
numbers in the apparent absence of any American fighters. At the same time,
seeing their mother ship under heavy attack, all nine of S ry ’s strike fighters
pitched into steep climbs to engage the B-17s overhead. For his part, Tomonaga
and the rest of the Kank and kanbaku simply eased down to 400 meters and
circled at a distance, waiting to commence landing. Until the American attacks
cleared up, the carriers below had no ability to take their aircraft on board.
Waiting with them was WO Yoshino Haruo, the recon flight leader from Kaga.
Yoshino, who had joined the Navy because all the marching in the Army seemed
like way too much work, took a while to find Kaga amidst the chaos–the fleet
was all spread out as a result of the attack. When he did find her, Kaga’s flight
deck was already closed for business, and not receiving aircraft.5 Instead,
Yoshino loitered nearby with Kaga’s kanbaku.

10-4: This famous photograph shows Hiry under attack by B-17s between 0800
and 0830. A stick of 500-lb bombs has just landed off her starboard quarter. The
shotai of three Zero fighters spotted near the bridge is Lt. Mori Shigeru’s CAP
patrol No. 4, indicating that this picture was taken before their takeoff at 0825.
Note that these fighters had eschewed using maximum runoff room and were
simply pushed back from the forward elevator as far as the bridge for takeoff.
Time apparently was of the essence. Also of interest is Hiry ’s hinomaru, which
clearly shows the carrier’s white deck stripes painted over the top. HiryWs kana
“HI” identification symbol (a white-painted, open-sided box) is visible on the
flight deck aft, as well as the red and white alternating stripes painted across the
aft end of the flight deck. (Naval Historical Center)

Akagi had turned into the wind briefly at 0808 to launch a flight of three
fighters under WO Ono Zenji. Kaga followed suit at 0815, sending up a group of
five Zeros under Ens. Yamaguchi Hiroyuki. Given the threat of attack, the
carriers weren’t bothering holding a steady course into the wind for their
launches; they were simply bringing their bows momentarily close enough to it
that the Zeros could dash down the deck and into the air. Between these two
launches and the fortuitous addition of the returning strike fighters, Kid Butai
was now finally beginning to put sufficient air cover up to beat off the ongoing
American attacks.
However, the B-17s overhead proved to be tough customers. Kaga’s
Yamaguchi immediately took two of his wingmen up in pursuit of them, joining
S ry ’s Zeros. However, the attacks by both groups of fighters were desultory at
best. They managed to damage a few of the Flying Forts, but none seriously. Lt.
Col. Sweeney’s pithy summation afterward was that “their heart was not in their
work.”6 This was probably simply confirmation of what everybody in the force
below already knew–the Zero was no great shakes at high-altitude combat. Not
only that, but after four hours in the air, S ry s fighters were almost at the end of
their tether in terms of fuel and ammunition.

At 0811, just as Hiry was being bracketed by Henderson’s attack, Tone No. 4
signaled back to Nagumo that “The enemy is composed of 5 cruisers and 5
destroyers.” On Akagi’s bridge, a momentary sense of relief washed over
Nagumo’s staff–perhaps there was not as much to worry about as had previously
been feared. If the Americans had only surface ships, and no carriers, then they
were well outside the range where Kid Butai needed to worry about them for
the moment. The critical question of why the enemy would be where he was
without having carriers was apparently not explicitly asked, although Kusaka
remembered in retrospect that he was still suspicious. “One message alone,” in
his opinion, “couldn’t make it clear that no enemy carriers were there. Nor could
there be an enemy force without carriers in the reported area under the prevailing
circumstances.”7
Sure enough, ten minutes later, at about 0820, a third message from Tone
No. 4 came back to Akagi that permanently dispelled Nagumo’s temporary sense
of security: “The enemy is accompanied by what appears to be a carrier.”
Nagumo’s exact reaction has not been recorded, but there couldn’t help but have
been great consternation on Akagi’s bridge. Now, beyond all doubt, the admiral
and his staff knew that their original battle plan was out the window. The
American Navy was present in force. Destroying the enemy flight deck was
absolutely the highest priority at hand.
A justifiable question at this point would be why it took Tone No. 4 as long
as it did to discern a carrier in the midst of the enemy formation. Indeed, one
recent historian goes so far as to assert that the reason Amari didn’t see the
carrier initially is because it wasn’t operating directly with its escorts.8 However,
this position really isn’t sustainable. First of all, this simply isn’t how escorting
vessels behave. More important, it is completely unsubstantiated by the
American ship records. The most likely explanation continues to be a
combination of variable visibility conditions and/ or haphazard spotting on the
part of Amari.
At the moment, however, nothing could be done, as Tomonaga was still
orbiting the fleet. On board Akagi, hik ch Masuda was dying to begin recovery
operations. But the American B-17s continued loitering overhead, making it
impossible. In addition, Akagi now had yet another group of fighters warming up
on its deck, a quartet of Zeros under PO1c Taniguchi Masao. Kaga, having sent
aloft Yamaguchi’s shotai at 0815, had another trio on deck getting ready as well.
Its shotaicho, PO1c Yamamoto Akira, would be flying for the second time this
morning. Hiry was in the same boat and was at this very moment sending aloft
a threesome under Lt. Mori Shigeru, who was taking his second shift aloft as
well. Meanwhile, on S ry , preparations to launch the D4Y reconnaissance
plane were well advanced, with the spanking new bomber warming up on the
flight deck.
At 0824, in the midst of these CAP preparations, several ships within the
force sighted a submarine periscope smack in the middle of the formation. This
was Nautilus, which had been skulking around at periscope depth on an intercept
course from the southwest. She had previously spotted Kid Butai at 0710,
sighting the “smoke of bombing and AA-fire beyond the horizon” to the
northwest. Her skipper, Lt. Commander William Brockman, had promptly
changed course to close the target and gone to battle stations.9
Brockman was rewarded at 0755 when he sighted masts on the horizon.
However, a sharp-eyed CAP Zero spotted him in return and made a quick
strafing run. Brockman took his boat down to 100 feet and continued closing. As
he did so, the sounds of Japanese sonar could be heard ahead. At 0800 Nautilus’s
skipper was pleased to sight four vessels, one of which appeared to be a
battleship of the Ise class, one a light cruiser of the Jintsu class, and the last two
apparently cruisers of the Yubari class. All were headed westerly on course 250
at twenty-five knots.10
Naturally, Brockman decided to attack the battleship and changed his
course to draw ahead of her. However, at this moment, his periscope was again
spotted by an alert Japanese aircraft, most likely a Type 95 floatplane aloft on
antisubmarine patrol. This time, Brockman was greeted not with a strafing, but
with a bomb deposited next to his boat. Worse yet, the enemy light cruiser bored
in with at least two other escorts, pinging as they came. Despite the risks,
though, Brockman boldly remained at periscope depth and continued to work
closer to his quarry.
Nautilus had, in fact, stumbled onto Kid Butai as it temporarily reversed
course westward, bringing it directly toward the American submarine. The
battleship he had sighted was most likely Kirishima, now leading the heavies
westward after the formation’s reversal. The “Jintsu-class cruiser” was obviously
Nagara, while the two “Yubari-class cruisers” were actually Kagero-class
destroyers, their larger forward stacks perhaps being the reason for Brockman’s
misidentifying them. Interestingly, Kirishima appears to have been well in
advance of Nagumo’s flattops at this time, because Brockman did not sight any
of them.
Despite Brockman’s boldness, the Japanese knew he was coming. At 0810
Nagara dropped five depth charges near the sub, just as Nautilus was getting set
up for her final attack run. At 0817 six more depth charges came crashing down.
Things were getting a bit too hairy for even the gutsy Brockman’s tastes, and he
eased his boat down to ninety feet to avoid the wary eyes of both the buzzing
CAP and the Japanese lookouts. Nagara and her consorts promptly dropped nine
more depth charges. Brockman, though, popped back up to periscope depth as
soon as the attack ended. Raising his periscope, he recalled that, “the picture
presented … was one never experienced in peacetime practices. Ships were on
all sides moving across the field at high speed and circling away to avoid the
submarine’s position. Ranges were above 3,000 yards. The Jintsu-class cruiser
had passed over and was now astern. The battleship was on our port bow and
firing her whole starboard broadside battery at the periscope!”11
Brockman, though, was having problems setting up his attack. One of his
torpedoes was running hot in its tube, having had its retaining pin sheered away
during the depth charging. It was making a hellacious racket, and Brockman was
certain that the Japanese escorts could hear its banshee wailing. Nagumo’s fleet–
what little Brockman could see of it–was still on a westerly heading when
Nautilus fired at 0825. His target was Kirishima. Taking aim at her starboard
side, Brockman let fly with two torpedoes at a range of 4,500 yards. Or at least
he thought he did–he found out later that one tube did not fire, leaving only one
fish streaking toward the target.
Kirishima evaded this threat by executing a sharp turn to port, heading
south and directly away from the torpedo. Whether Kirishima even saw Nautilus
is open to debate–her “firing” at the sub’s periscope may in fact have been
directed at a fresh set of American planes that were attacking her about this time.
Whatever the reason, though, her neat turn away was exactly what was needed to
spoil Brockman’s attack. Not only that, but Nagara once again sighted the sub
and charged in to renew her attack. Brockman quickly dove to 150 feet just as
another round of depth charging began at 0830.
As soon as Nautilus’s scope was seen on the western edge of the force,
Nagumo’s carriers made tracks to get away by heading back east. The fact that
Nagara’s persistent attacks had forced the American boat to dive again was
comforting for the Japanese, at least as far as it went. However, the knowledge
that an American submarine was lurking near at hand undoubtedly notched the
pressure on the Japanese up still further. Not only that, but nearly simultaneous
with Nautilus’s appearance, yet another American air attack–the third in the last
thirty minutes–began materializing. This was a force of eleven old Marine SB2U
Vindicator scout bombers–the second half of VMSB-241–led by that unit’s
executive officer, Major Benjamin W. Norris. His aircraft had followed
Henderson’s flight in at some distance. Captain Aoki, seeing this new threat, at
0827 turned Akagi sharply away from the Americans.
Fortunately for Akagi, she had just launched fighters, or she would have been
sorely beset. As it was, though, these new additions, as well as some of the Zeros
that had just beaten off Henderson, were able to assemble in time to deflect this
new blow. Akagi’s hard working Lieutenant Ibusuki was present, along with the
two 6th Ku pilots still in the air. They were joined by WO Ono Zenji’s trio. Hiry
contributed the two remaining members from her third watch. And S ry s
Lieutenant Fujita and his three-plane shotai also charged back in to the attack.
Norris’s command, though, benefited from the rather hasty nature of the
defense thrown up in front of the force’s two flagships. The Americans lost no
inbound aircraft this time, though several were badly shot up. Whether by
prudence, or simply judging that Akagi and Hiry were too far away to be
attacked effectively, Norris decided to focus his efforts on the battleship Haruna.
She was on the edge of the main body, and as such was easier to get to. In the
face of the battleship’s AA, they began tilting into their dives. Haruna’s skipper,
Rear Admiral Takama Tamotsu, wasted no time in demonstrating that he knew
how to drive his ship. The big battlewagon slithered through a series of evasive
turns, neatly threading the needle between the Vindicators’ attacks. Although
Haruna was bracketed by five or six near misses, the bombs didn’t damage her a
whit. At the conclusion of the attack, Kid Butai’s Zeros harried the Americans
off to the southwest, eventually claiming a pair of dive-bombers.12
The reader is forgiven for being confused by the rather bewildering welter
of goings-on at this juncture, but that is precisely the point that needs to be
made. The situation was confusing, no less to the contemporary historian trying
to pick apart the exact sequence of events ex post facto than to the men standing
on Akagi’s bridge. The American air attacks, while materially ineffective, were
nearly constant. As a result, Kid Butai was having no luck getting into any sort
of a rhythm; it was operating reactively. Worse, its various responses, at least in
terms of air defense, do not appear to have been centrally coordinated. The
rather precipitous drop in CAP assets at around 0800 had been followed by
something of an overreaction on the part of the individual hik ch s as they
stoked the CAP back up. There does not appear to have been anyone within the
force looking down the road and assessing what was really needed. Instead, as
the American attacks rolled in, the Japanese responded almost reflexively,
sending up shotais piecemeal.
It’s not hard to see how this might have happened. Nagumo was stuck on
board a wildly maneuvering carrier, watching his other vessels running pell-mell
in all directions. Every time it looked as if things were settling down a bit,
another air raid warning would come in. Nagumo can hardly have known where
all his ships were at any given time, let alone have had an appreciation of what
his aggregate CAP strength was.
Here is where the Japanese lack of early-warning radar materially damaged
their chances in the battle. Radar was like a crystal ball–in effect, it allowed the
commander to look a certain distance into the future, see developing threats, and
plan accordingly. As it was, though, the CAP battle was being directed by four
air officers on four separate ships, who could barely communicate with each
other, or their forces aloft. Without the ability to prognosticate what was pending
in the way of attacks, the predictably human response to the question of “How
much CAP is enough?” was “Just a little bit more.”

10-5: Attacks against Kid Butai:0815-0840. Scale and movements are
approximate. This phase of the battle is extremely difficult to depict accurately,
because of the large number of individual attacks and the evasive maneuvers
undertaken by the carriers. However, it is clear that Nagara and Kirishima were
somewhat out of place in the formation as a whole, as they were subsequently to
become involved with Nautilus on the western flank of the formation. It is also
known that by about 0830, the fleet was briefly headed westward to avoid
Norris’s incoming attack. Shortly afterward, however, Kid Butai would be
headed east once again.

Lack of radar also reduced the effective distance at which the CAP fighters
could engage the Americans. Early warning for the Japanese force was provided
by its outlying cruisers and destroyers. Yet these pickets could only be pushed
out so far from the force before they, too, would be beyond visual range of the
carriers. As a result, the CAP was frequently engaging the Americans fairly
close to the Japanese carriers. In many cases, the Zeros pursued fleeing
Americans through the midst of the force itself. Not only was this dangerous, but
it also meant that in many cases the CAP wasn’t being given the space it needed
to operate most efficiently. Many of the American attacks would have probably
been even more badly chewed up had they been detected farther away.
Having radar might not have been a panacea for the Japanese, though. As
the Americans could testify, learning to use this new technology was no
cakewalk. Effective use of radar had already driven the Americans to make the
conceptual leap toward the centralized coordination of air defense assets from
many ships via a single location–the combat information center (CIC). The first
prototype CIC had been installed aboard Hornet when she was commissioned in
October 1941. Even later in the war, having had radar on their ships for two
years, the Japanese would never manage to make this leap. Above all, effective
use of radar required adequate communications to the individual CAP elements.
The Japanese, operating as they were on a single radio frequency for all of their
aircraft,13 and having faulty radios in their Zeros, met neither of these
prerequisites. Thus, even if the Japanese had had radar at Midway, its use might
have been limited.

By around 0830, the American attacks were finally starting to wind down, and
the Japanese were beginning to think about landing the Midway attack force.
Admiral Yamaguchi, however, was probably concerned by having been on the
receiving end of an attack by what had appeared to be carrier-type aircraft.
Apparently exasperated by the inability to strike back, he had a message flashed
from Hiry to Akagis plane guard destroyer Nowaki. She, in turn, dutifully
relayed the admiral’s message to Nagumo– “Consider it advisable to launch
attack force immediately.”14 Nagumo’s mood upon receiving this entreaty from
his brash subordinate has not been recorded, but it hardly could have been
charitable. By any rational standard, the time for launching a strike against the
Americans was long past, and Yamaguchi should have known it. Indeed, the
force was even now scrambling in preparation for bringing Tomonaga down.
More important, of course, was the fact that at 0820, Nagumo still had no
ability to strike “immediately.” The photographs taken by American B-17s
during this interval make it perfectly clear that no strike aircraft were on the
Japanese flight decks. Thus, Yamaguchi’s entreaty really was tantamount to
suggesting that Tomonaga’s flight be ditched en masse in preference for an
immediate spotting and subsequent launch at perhaps 0915. Coming from a man
who had suggested during the planning for Pearl Harbor that the solution to Hiry
’s and S ry ’s shorter range was to abandon them off the Hawaiian Islands
after the completion of the operation, this simply was not a serious proposal.
Nagumo didn’t even bother replying.
At the same time Yamaguchi was venting spleen, Akagi sent aloft PO1c
Taniguchi’s did the same with PO1c Yamamoto’s threesome. To the rear, S ry
sent up her Type 2 recon aircraft, with explicit orders to find the American task
group and send back a definitive position fix. The D4Y buzzed off to the east.
None too soon, as at 0834 Petty Officer Amari radioed Nagumo that Tone No. 4
was homeward bound. This announcement was not greeted with joy on Akagi,
and Amari was told in short order to stay where he was.
Besides his admiral’s displeasure, Amari was beginning to have difficulties
of his own. His fuel was starting to run low. Worse, the Americans were now
aware of his presence, having detected him on radar at around 0815.15 On
several occasions during the morning, flitting about just above the southern
horizon, he was hunted by enemy CAP fighters. Amari’s pilot, though, skillfully
ducked into clouds when pressed.

Relatively near at hand to Tone’s elusive scout, Frank Jack Fletcher’s Yorktown
was about to get into the action. Having charged down from the northeast after
recovering her search aircraft, she was now within range to launch. Fletcher had
hoped that further reports from the PBYs would clarify the enemy situation
somewhat during the interim. However, no new information on any additional
Japanese carrier groups was forthcoming, and in the end Fletcher ordered
Yorktown to begin launching at 0838.
Unlike her sisterships, Yorktown managed to launch a well-coordinated
strike. She sent up a total of thirty-five aircraft–six fighters, seventeen dive-
bombers, and twelve torpedo planes, in two deckloads. The SBDs went first,
followed by the TBDs, the latter heading off immediately to the southwest at
2,500 feet. A quick spot and launch then sent up the shorter-ranged Wildcats.
The SBDs and fighters soon followed after the slower TBDs. The entire
formation was in the air by 0906.16 Yorktown’s second dive-bomber squadron
(VS-5) was left on board as a reserve, much to the collective disgust of its pilots.
Fletcher’s plan was fairly simple. He and his staff had mapped out a course
to an intercept point where they expected Nagumo’s fleet would be at 0900.
They knew they had to allow for the fact that the original Japanese sighting
reports were now several hours old. Further, while they were convinced that
Nagumo would roughly hold his course, they also assumed that he would not
approach Midway too closely.17 Therefore, Fletcher judged the most likely
position of the Japanese carriers to be 30-00’N, 179-00’W, which at 0900 would
place them at a bearing of 240 degrees, 150 miles from TF 17. Yorktown’s
planes would fly a course straight to that point. If they did not spot the enemy,
they would turn northwest and fly up the enemy’s line of advance, before turning
at last for the northeast leg back home. With such an approach, Fletcher’s staff
believed they would be able to come across the Japanese no matter which way
they maneuvered.18
 It is worthwhile noting the differences between the staff and air operational
work aboard TF 16 and 17. Whereas TF 16’s launches had devolved into almost
a shotgun approach to the problem, Yorktown’s entire group was directed along a
single bearing toward a single point on the ocean. This meant that if Yorktown’s
group found the enemy, it would be in a much better position to deliver a well-
coordinated attack. Not only that, but since TF 17’s departure was almost an
hour later, her air group would benefit from changes in weather conditions and
visibility as they flew their route. With Yorktown’s launch, the Americans now
had a total of 151 carrier aircraft in the air.19 The question was, could they find
the Japanese?

10-6: American air operations, circa 0900. This shows the relative positions of
the various American air groups at 0900, immediately after the launch of
Yorktown’s strike package.

At the very moment Fletcher was sending the last of his aircraft up, Nagumo was
bringing the bulk of his down. Finally at 0837, Akagi hoisted a white flag with a
black ball, indicating that her decks were “open for business.” Underneath the
landing ensign were two numeric flags giving the wind velocity in meters per
second.20 Still circling overhead, Tomonaga’s force no doubt breathed a
collective sigh of relief to see these welcome signals come fluttering up the
carriers’ yardarms. Now came the tricky part.
In the intervening four hours since Tomonaga’s launch, Kid Butai had
moved farther away from the descending cold front. As the force had traveled
southeast, the wind direction had gradually shifted around until it was now
coming out of the east-northeast at about three meters/second.21 Contrary to
most maps of the battle that show Kid Butai steering a southeastern course at
this time, it is far more likely that the carriers were now all steering roughly east.
This is supported by Akagi’s log entries in the Nagumo Report and is consistent
with a carrier force landing aircraft.22 Furthermore, we know from the postwar
testimony of several of Kid Butai’s carrier officers that the carriers moved in
unison when performing large takeoff or landing operations.23 Thus, we can
presume that all four carriers were headed roughly east at this time.

10-7: Revised track chart. This diagram shows Akagi’s reconstructed movements
from the log entries in the Nagumo Report, superimposed on the report’s track
chart. Akagi commenced recovery operations to the northeast of Nagara at 0837,
while the latter was busy hunting Nautilus. The derived course indicates that Kid
Butai’s carriers moved east during recovery operations.

The other effect that the eastward turn had was to place CarDiv 2–Hiry
and S ry –in the lead of the formation. Whereas formerly the two divisional
flagships had taken the fore, now the fleet had essentially turned on its heels,
with each ship turning individually to take up the new heading. Nagumo didn’t
have time for niceties now–dressing his formation for parade would have to
wait. It seems likely, though, that S ry used her superior speed to catch up to
Hiry somewhat, keeping her divisional flagship off her starboard beam. Thus,
Kid Butai’s carriers were no longer in a box formation, but were gradually
elongating into something of a trapezoid. The position of the escorting heavy
units is more difficult to ascertain, and it is probable that they were in various
sectors of the formation during different times of the day. However, it seems
likely that BatDiv 3 was in column on the port side of the formation, with
Haruna in the lead. Likewise, Abe’s flagship, Tone, led Chikuma on the
starboard side. Nagara was in the center van, leading the carriers.24
The positions of many of the Japanese destroyers are almost totally
unknown, other than the fact that the majority of them were acting as air-raid
pickets. The rough whereabouts of Arashi we know about only because she was
busy dealing with Nautilus for a portion of the morning. We have consistent
evidence that Nowaki was Akagis plane guard destroyer, and lsokaze was S ry
’s. We can presume that Hagikaze was likely acting in the same role for Kaga.
But the specific location of the others is unknown, and in the absence of their
logs, will likely remain so. In truth, they probably varied wildly as the morning’s
attacks unfolded. Nagara, as squadron flagship for the destroyers, most likely
tried to maintain a position at the head of the formation, but it would appear that
she may have roamed about as well, particularly in response to Nautilus’s earlier
attack.

Landing an airplane on a carrier is perhaps the most difficult challenge faced by

any pilot, and Tomonaga’s men had to do it under more stressful circumstances
than normal. The morning mission had been a long one, and everyone was
hungry and tired. Their aircraft were low on fuel, and the landing had to be
conducted under the threat of enemy attack. They needed to get down as quickly
and precisely as possible. Unfortunately, given the damaged condition of many
of the airplanes, just getting them on the deck in one piece was going to be a
challenge. Indeed, Fuchida’s rather glib statement that “with the veteran fliers
we had at this time, speedy recovery operations on board the carriers even under
stringent battle conditions were little more than child’s play,” is clearly an
oversimplification of the situation facing Tomonaga’s fliers. His quip both
understates the inherent dangers of landing operations and simultaneously heaps
further discredit on Nagumo’s moanings regarding his pilots’ training.25 In fact,
both men were wrong–Nagumo’s pilots were well trained, but carrier landings
were a very delicate business even for experienced aviators.
The aircraft began forming clockwise holding patterns outboard of their
home carriers. Each was readily identifiable by the configuration of their island
and deck features, but each also had a large white kana symbol painted on the
flight deck aft for identification–“A” for Akagi,“Ka” for Kaga,“Hi” for Hiry ,
and “Sa” for S ry .26 Planes with mechanical problems or wounded crewmen
were moved to the heads of queue. One by one, each plane broke out of the
holding circle, crossed the bow of the carrier some ways ahead, and flew down
its opposite side. Once behind the ship, each turned inward to line up their final
approaches. This took them practically over the top of the carrier’s plane guard
destroyer, which was stationed 700 to 1,000 meters astern. From there, they
could rescue any downed aviators who fell short of the fantail or went over the
side. If all was normal, the aircraft would turn in so as to be about 700 meters
behind the carrier, at 200 meters altitude.

10-8: This shot, taken from a 25-mm gun tub looking forward, shows Kaga’s
starboard aft green landing light array. The array of four lights is mounted atop a
triangular support brace, which is attached via a hinge to another 25-mm gun
tub. (Coincidentally, this is the same light array and gun tubs that were found on
the sea bottom off Midway in late 1999.) When flight operations were not under
way, the array could be winched parallel to the flight deck. Note also the radio
aerials in their lowered horizontal position, as well as the deck-edge nets
designed to prevent aircraft from rolling over the side of the flight deck. (Photo
courtesy Michael Wenger)

Just as with takeoffs, the decision-making authority for landing was vested
almost solely in the pilot. The Imperial Navy had no comparable officer to the
U.S. Navy’s Landing Signal Officer (LSO). No one on board the carrier was
charged with actively directing the planes, although a signals seibiin under the
command of the hik ch could wave off a plane if it was judged to be in a
blatantly unsafe approach, or if the deck was fouled.
Once in the final approach, the pilot established his glide slope. However,
the Japanese also had a unique landing aid (chakkan shid t –“landing guidance
landing guidance lights”) to assist the pilot in setting up a safe approach.
Originally, it had been intended for night landing purposes, but it had proven so
useful that it was used in daytime as well. This device consisted of a bank of two
red lights set at the level of the flight deck and a similar bank of four green lights
set some 10-15 meters forward. First developed in 1932, each of the one-
kilowatt lights was variable in intensity and equipped with a mirror so as to emit
a very narrow cone of illumination.27 Matched arrays were located on opposite
sides of the ship.
The angle of the lights was adjusted for each type of airplane. Attack planes
typically came in at around a five-degree slope; fighters perhaps a half degree
steeper than that. As the pilot descended, he attempted to make the lights line up
so that the green lights were positioned immediately above the red. If the pilot
could only see the red lights (i.e., he had fallen out of the cone of green light), he
was below the correct slope. If the red lights were over the green, he was coming
in so low that he would probably hit the ship’s fantail. Likewise, if the green
light was positioned far above the red, the pilot was coming in too high.28
As the plane approached the flight deck, he would eventually lose sight of
the rear edge of the flight deck. However, Japanese carriers had white or red-
and-white-striped outrigger platforms near the aft end of the flight deck. These
platforms helped the pilot gauge the orientation of the flight deck even if the
deck was obscured by the nose of the aircraft.29 At any point in the approach, the
seibiin could signal the pilot as to his condition. A red flag from the seibiin
signaled that the pilot should go around again; a white flag with an “H” meant
that the aircraft’s hook was not lowered.30 Each pilot aimed to keep his airspeed
about ten knots above stalling. For most aircraft, this meant maintaining between
seventy and seventy-five knots.31 Lining up the final few seconds of the
approach required excellent reflexes. In any sort of a crosswind, even a second’s
worth of inattention could mean putting the plane over the side and into the
heavy steel netting that lined the flight deck. But if everything went properly, the
pilot would cut his engine just before reaching the brightly painted fantail and
then catch one of the arresting wires with his hook.
Snagging the arresting wire was hardly a restful way to come to a halt, but
it was not nearly as violent as the deceleration found on a postwar carrier jet.
The Kure Type 4 arresting gear used at Midway had an induction coil drum
below the flight deck, around which the arresting wires were spooled. The wires
were held about eight inches off the deck by a support that could be lowered flat
when not in use. The Type 4 could stop a four-ton aircraft traveling at a speed of
sixty knots in less than forty meters, applying about 2Gs of deceleration in the
process.32
As the first aircraft began approaching, the deck crewmen crouched in their
tubs alongside the flight deck. This was where things could get really exciting.
Landing accidents were not uncommon even under peacetime conditions, and
with damaged aircraft and wounded pilots, the odds were good that somebody
was going to crack up this morning. The most common mishap was the pilot
missing the deck astern. Damaged landing gear from hard landings, hitting the
island with a wing, and going over the side were not unheard of either.33
Another common accident was a barrier crash, wherein a plane would miss the
landing wire and go hurtling into the crash barrier.

10-9: Typical Japanese carrier flight deck equipment, as carried on board Hiry .

Like the Americans, the Japanese used barriers to separate the after end of
the flight deck (where landings were taking place) from the forward portion. If
aircraft were parked forward, there would almost certainly be one or more
barriers in place between them and the fantail, because a crash into a group of
parked aircraft could have disastrous consequences. A typical crash barrier
consisted of three athwartships steel cables (upper, middle, and lower) spanning
the width of the flight deck. These were supported by poles that could be raised
or lowered by compressed air in a matter of a few seconds. Such a barrier could
stop a four-ton aircraft traveling at a speed of fifty feet per second in a distance
of less than twenty-five feet.34 Obviously, hitting the barrier at 4Gs was hardly a
love pat, and it often led to unpleasant consequences for the plane and pilot.
Still, it was better than plowing into one’s squadron mates.
As the planes came down, the deck crew prepared to receive them. Men
with fire extinguishers were standing by, and any damaged plane could be
swarmed almost instantly by dozens of rescuers. Japanese records do not record
how many deck accidents occurred during the Tomonaga force’s landings, but
there must have been some. According to Fuchida, a Kank is known to have
landed on one wheel on board Hiry , which would have left the plane out of
commission for certain. And a mortally wounded fighter pilot from Kaga, PO1c
Tanaka Yukuo, most likely crash landed his as well. He died before he could be
removed from the cockpit.35
Most of Tomonaga’s men, however, landed successfully. The Japanese
were certainly aided by the easy landing characteristics of their carrier aircraft,
which had low stall speeds and forgiving handling. Not surprisingly, the Zero
retained its responsiveness even at low speeds. But even the lumbering Type 97
(in the opinion of one British test pilot who later flew it) “had a docile stall, and
thus could be flown to its maneuver limits with impunity.”36 All three aircraft
also had good visibility over the nose, making control of the plane during the
final approach much easier.
As soon as each plane had been brought to a halt, deck crewmen rushed out
to begin the stowage process. The pilot (or in the case of the Kank and
kanbaku, the observer) would already be releasing the hook,37 and the crash
barriers would be lowered on command from the hik ch }38 By now, the deck
crew had reached the plane, and begun folding its wings. Time was of the
essence; already the next plane would be moving into position to land. The entire
final approach, from the time of turn-in to landing on the deck, had taken about
twenty seconds so far, and further time was needed to move the plane forward
off of the arresting wires. During normal operations, the Japanese were able to
land a plane every twenty-five to forty-five seconds.
As mentioned earlier, the Japanese avoided deck parks whenever possible.
They believed that the hangar afforded more protection to the plane and crew.
During landing, the Japanese shoved the newly landed aircraft forward of the
crash barrier in preparation for taking the next one on board. Then, as soon as
landing operations were completed, all planes were stowed below. It is likely
that aircraft whose hangar locations were ahead of the barrier (such as fighters)
were simply wheeled forward and stowed below immediately. However, for the
Kank in particular (whose typical storage spots were in the rear of the hangars),
striking below had to wait until all aircraft were recovered. This technique
(called renzoku sh y -“continuous recovery”) of temporary deck parks and
immediate stowage had been a feature of Japanese carrier operations since the
mid-1930s. However, this fixation on hangars had a definite downside, in that
the stowage process was governed by elevator cycles. This necessarily retarded
Japanese carrier flight operations in comparison to those of their American
opposites who, in general, performed most refueling and rearming functions
right on the flight deck. Not only did this restrict the flexibility of Japanese flight
operations, but it also restricted the Japanese to performing dangerous rearming
procedures within the confines of the ship. The practical consequences of this
approach would become apparent in about an hour and a half.

10-10: Taking on board a Type 97 during the Pearl Harbor operation, as seen
from the top of Akagi’s island. The signals officer (seibiin) can be seen standing
on the flight deck. The crash barrier, which can be seen just aft of him, is
lowered flush with the deck. The landing wires are clearly visible. Also visible
(though somewhat obscured behind the signal lanyards running vertically
through the picture) is Akagi’s plane guard destroyer, steaming astern and almost
directly in line with Akagi’s port deck edge. (Photo courtesy Michael Wenger)

As Akagi’s aircraft now came on board, the talk on her bridge was all about what
to do after landing operations were completed. Nagumo had already sent word
out at 0830 that the force’s dive-bombers should equip themselves with 250-kg
(i.e., semi armorpiercing) bombs.39 Having committed to dispatching the enemy
task force, Nagumo chose to close with the enemy so as to ensure that Kid
Butais strike would be within range when his strike was prepared. Nagumo’s
decision may have also been informed by the desire to keep the wind on his bow.
A northeastern course would allow him to conduct flight operations without
breaking away from the enemy.
At 0845, Tone No. 4 sent a new report: “Sight what appears to be two
additional enemy cruisers in position bearing 8 degrees, distance 250 miles from
Midway.” Nagumo apparently did not apprehend the true nature of this signal–
Amari had sighted the fringes of a second American carrier group. Tone No. 4
did not know it, but they were observing Task Force 17. Coincidentally, at the
same time that Amari’s signal came in, Admiral Abe on board Tone signaled
Captain Komura of Chikuma to send another Type 0 recon floatplane to Amari’s
position. It was clear that Amari was not sending information along quickly
enough.
At 0850 Tone No. 4 again repeated that he was homeward bound, only to be
told at 0854 that not only was he to stay where he was, but he was to activate his
radio transmitter and keep it on so that the fleet could home in on him for
direction-finding purposes. What Amari thought of this order cannot be known,
but it should have been apparent that Nagumo wasn’t pleased with his
performance thus far. The fact that he was now being expected to broadcast his
position, which the Americans could pick up just as easily as his compatriots,
could not have been a welcome order. However, he quickly acknowledged its
receipt at 0855 and added that ten enemy torpedo aircraft (Yorktown’s newly
launched strike force) were headed toward Kid Butai.
At 0855 Nagumo finally decided to apprise Admiral Yamamoto of the
situation he had been grappling with for the last hour and a half, signaling
“Enemy composed of 1 carrier, 5 cruisers, and 5 destroyers sighted at 0800 in
positions bearing 10 degrees, distance 240 miles from Midway. We are heading
for it.” By any measure, this was a very sparse communiqu’ regarding the
current situation. It made no mention of what Kid Butai had been doing since
the sighting nor of Amari’s recent report hinting at additional enemy vessels.
In fact, though Nagumo could not know it, Yamamoto was already well
aware of the presence of the enemy, having intercepted a number of the previous
transmissions between Tone No. 4 and Kid Butai. Incredibly, the unexpected
presence of the American carrier apparently did not disturb Yamamoto and his
staff in the slightest. Captain Kuroshima asked if they should order Nagumo to
attack the Americans, but almost immediately vacillated by reminding the
commander in chief that Nagumo was to have kept half of his aircraft in reserve
for just such a contingency. Yamamoto let the matter drop.40 His leadership at
this moment was nothing short of nonchalant–a far cry from the heavy-handed
rigidity he had shown a mere two months earlier.
At the same time Nagumo was sending his situation report, cruiser Chikuma
was recovering two of her search planes. It was standard operating procedure for
the planes to land in the wake of their mother ship, so as to receive the benefit of
the relatively calm water there. As soon as they set down, the cruiser would
execute a ninety-degree turn, usually through the wind, so as to create an area of
stiller water on the lee side of her hull. The plane would then taxi up to the ship
to be winched on board by the ship’s crane. At 0855 Chikuma was dead in the
water and recovering her aircraft. This made her vulnerable to submarine attack,
but there was no other practical way of retrieving her planes. By 0902, having
recovered a Type 95 and a Type 0, she began working herself back up to rejoin
the formation.
Submarine attack was a very real possibility, as Kid Butai’s old nemesis,
Nautilus, was still in the neighborhood. With Kid Butai’s carriers more or less
holding their respective courses during landing operations, Lieutenant
Commander Brockman picked this inopportune moment to put in a third
appearance. Poking his periscope up at 0846, he saw that his original group of
ships and the target battleship were all well out of range except for the “Jintsu-
type cruiser,” whose echo ranging was “still quite accurate.”41 Nautilus headed
back down for a bit. Then at 0900 Brockman raised scope again, and was thrilled
to sight a “S ry -class” carrier off his starboard bow, heading east at twenty-
five knots, some 16,000 yards distant. She was apparently undamaged but was
firing her AA guns at something and “changing course continuously.” Brockman
was on a converging course, but once again Nagara ruined his approach.
Brockman noted that “while making this observation [of the carrier], the Jintsu-
type cruiser began to close again at high speed.”42 Admiral Kimura was handling
his flagship with dash and aggressiveness.
This time Brockman resolved to go after the pesky cruiser instead of firing
a single torpedo at the zigzagging target at 0910. The range was close, just 2,600
yards. But Nagara changed course, the torpedo missed, and Brockman had no
choice but to go deep as quickly as possible. He rigged for depth charging and
didn’t have long to wait, as the Japanese shortly dropped a brace of six of them
on his boat, followed by another eight over the next twenty minutes.
Interestingly, if Nagara noticed the fish being fired at her, she did not
report it. One of her consorts, though, the destroyer Arashi, noted receiving the
attack, indicating that she must have been in proximity to Nagara at the time. In
any case, either on his own initiative, or perhaps as ordered by Nagara, Cdr.
Watanabe Yasamusa of Arashi decided to remain behind and pin Nautilus down.
The Japanese probably didn’t know that thus far they had had three visits from
the same submarine, but the fact remained that there had been too many of them
poking their noses out this morning. It was time to let Kid Butai get far enough
ahead of this one that it wouldn’t be a problem anymore.
Throughout these happenings, the carriers were still bringing down strike
aircraft. The landing process had not proceeded in a uniform fashion across the
fleet. Kaga recovered all of her aircraft by 0850. Hiry had apparently not yet
even begun recovering hers by that time, for reasons unknown.43 Akagi
completed recovery at 0859, some twenty-two minutes after she began. The
carriers of CarDiv 2 both completed their landings by 0910. Immediately
thereafter, Akagi recovered a lone CAP fighter, and Kaga brought down five
more of her own Zeros from her third watch.
Once landing operations were complete, the deck crews lost no time
moving the strike aircraft below to the hangars. Many of the flight crews had
already made their way to their ready rooms for debriefing. This would be the
first chance that the ship’s officers had to get a detailed picture of what had
occurred over Midway more than two hours earlier. Yet, the normal debriefings
apparently did not take place immediately. Everyone was too busy with
preparations for the coming strike!44 This was unfortunate, because some
valuable information could have been learned from the returning airmen,
particularly regarding the defensive firepower of the Americans. For one thing, it
would have helped explain why there were so many faces missing in the ready
rooms of CarDiv 2.
The first part of the morning mission had gone well, with Tomonaga
leading his force southward into ever-improving weather conditions. Yet, despite
radio silence on their part, the Japanese had found Midway alerted to their
coming when they sighted the island at 0615, some forty miles distant.
Tomonaga hadn’t known, of course, that Kid Butai had been detected by an
American PBY less than an hour after his force’s departure. All he knew was
that all of the enemy’s aircraft had been airborne.
By 0617 the Japanese formation had closed up in preparation for attacking,
just in time to have numerous undetected American fighters make diving runs on
their formation at 0621. Hiry had lost three Kank in the first pass before
Suganami’s fighters had been able to react. Two were from the tail end of the
first chutai. The third was the leader of Hiry ’s second chutai, Lt. Kikuchi
Rokuro. Kikuchi’s plane was so badly hit that he was forced to ditch near Kure
Island, though he and his crew survived the crash.45 PO1c Maruyama Taisuke,
commander of a plane in the second chutai, had looked across to the first chutai
in horror, as PO2c Miyauchi Masaji’s Kank was hit in the fuel tank by one of
the Wildcats. Mortally wounded, the torpedo bomber began blazing up. To
Maruyama, Miyauchi’s plane seemed so close he could almost reach out to it.
He could see the struggling faces in the cockpit, as Miyauchi bravely held his
formation. But as Maruyama watched, the flames consumed the cockpit, and the
Kank nosed over for the sea below.46 Another first chutai Kank joined
Miyauchi in a similar death dive, that of PO1c Toba Shigenobu. On his opposite
side, Maruyama could see hikotaicho Tomonaga’s Type 97 blowing gasoline
vapor out of a hole in its wing. The commander’s plane briefly caught fire, but
the flames later died out. Further off, a Type 97 from S ry also fell to the
enemy fighters.
After the Wildcats had expended their initial attacks, though, Suganami’s
men had largely had their way with them. The enemy’s fighters were no match
for the Zero, nor for the superior experience of the Japanese aviators. Those who
had tried dogfighting with the Japanese had simply died, as their slower,
clumsier aircraft were out-turned and then shot down in flames. One Akagi
aviator aptly summed up the situation in response to Fuchida’s subsequent
inquiry: “Enemy fighters are lousy indeed. I think they were almost wiped
out.”47 And indeed, most of the American fighters had been slaughtered or
driven away in short order. Thereafter, the attack force had continued to the
target unhindered.
Tomonaga had approached Midway from the north but then circled east.
CarDiv 2’s level-bomber formations led off, approaching the island from the
northeast at 150 knots at an altitude of 11,000 feet. In this way, Hiry and S ry
’s level-bombers would fly down the long axis of each island, including the
length of one of the runways on Eastern Island. The force’s monolithic
formation likely began slipping apart into component chutai, as each formation
selected targets and began its attack run.48

10-11: Morning attack on Midway Island. (Source: Senshi S sho, p. 300; S ry
and Kaga carrier action reports)

Any belated hopes the Japanese might have had of finding the atoll’s
defenses weak or surprised had vanished in short order, as a storm of flak rose to
greet them. The first bursts exploded behind the formation, but the defenders
quickly corrected their aim. The Marines’ heavy antiaircraft guns had made the
most of the target presented by Tomonaga’s stately procession. The Americans
had zeroed in and continued firing rapidly. Soon, Tomonaga and his flight found
themselves clawing their way through thick, evil clouds of exploding shells.
Their aircraft had been buffeted by black shell bursts, and several planes had
been hit. One of Hiry s second chutai aircraft, that of PO1c Sakamoto, had been
fatally damaged and fell into the lagoon short of Sand Island. To Tomonaga, the
flight over the island had seemed interminable. Yet, finally they had been able to
drop their ordnance, their planes surging upward as the heavy bombs were
released. Being able to finally leave the island’s defenses behind had been the
purest joy.
Next it had been the dive-bombers’ turn. They had loitered to the north,
watching the level-bomber assault. Now, under Kaga’s buntaicho, Ogawa
Shoichi, they had come in from the east. Visibility before the attack had been
excellent, but that was before the mayhem that the level-bombers had unleashed.
The wind was gusting to almost eighteen knots, which had the effect of blowing
smoke from the first hits west over the islands, obscuring the targets for the
following aircraft. The wind also promised to degrade the accuracy of the dive-
bombers. However, the worst impediment to conducting a smooth attack had
again been the islands’ defenses. Against the dive-bombers, the Americans had
not been restricted to using heavy flak–numerous automatic weapons had opened
up on the kanbaku.
To say that the Japanese were disagreeably surprised by the power of
American antiaircraft fire badly understates the case. The islands had fired back
with everything at their disposal, transforming their perimeters into twin rings of
fire. Hiry ’s report noted that, “Around the entire circumference of Eastern and
Sand Islands there are many dual purpose antiaircraft emplacements of the latest
equipment. These … guns seem to make use of a director … the accuracy is
excellent, and the antiaircraft fire is intense.”49 Lieutenant Tomonaga himself
had never been exposed to American antiaircraft fire before, though the rumors
in the fleet said that during the attack on Pearl Harbor, despite the element of
surprise, the Americans had responded with very heavy fire in a matter of
minutes. Tomonaga could well believe it. This morning they had certainly staked
their claim to having some of the finest flak in the world.
The dive-bomber attack lasted about three minutes, with individual aircraft
making their exits on the deck at high speed to avoid return fire. After they left,
the fighters continued strafing shore installations and hunting down whatever
stray American aircraft they could find. Meanwhile, the attack aircraft had
proceeded to the assembly point located west of the island. There they had
waited for another forty minutes before the fighters and stragglers had rejoined
them before turning for home at 0725.
It was difficult for the debriefers back on the four carriers to assess the
damage inflicted on Midway, as the pilots claimed a wide range of results.
Akagi’s report stated that “the total results of the strike were assessed as small
fires being started at three places among the land installations; heavy losses
appear to have been inflicted on installations and personnel.” It further stated
that, “Major fires were started in oil tanks, barracks and various seaplane
sheds.”50 Upping the ante, Kaga’s report claimed “nine direct hits with No. 25
[high-explosive] bombs on Sand Island seaplane sheds causing heavy damage
and fires; seven direct hits with No. 25 bombs on Sand Island Officers and
Enlisted Men’s quarters, causing heavy damage and fires; Sand Island oil tank
was left on fire.”51 S ry ’s report trespassed into the realm of fantasy, recording
that her first high-level chutai had “attacked Sand Island dual purpose batteries;
all bombs were hits; silenced one emplacement; heavy losses inflicted.” Indeed,
the tally for her second and third chutai, which had both attacked the Eastern
Island airfield runways, enumerated the same supposedly perfect accuracy.52
Perhaps merely striking the ground was sufficiently accurate to judge a bomb a
hit. However, the scarcely diminished antiaircraft fire of the Americans must
have sounded a cautionary note to these claims. Indeed, Hiry ’s report was more
restrained than her division mate: “The First chutai scored a hit on a fuel tank in
the vicinity of the NE cape on Sand Island. The tank burned. The Second chutai
destroyed part of a dual purpose gun emplacement on the east shore of Sand
Island. The Third chutai covered [sic] flying boat and seaplane ramp at Sand
Island and demolished it.”53
In actuality, Tomonaga’s assault had done fairly serious damage to the
atoll’s installations but had hardly sufficed to put the place out of business. On
Eastern Island, bombs had demolished the power plant and the gasoline lines
supporting the aircraft servicing areas. This meant that refueling on the airstrip
would have to be accomplished by hand. Bombs had hit near the sick bay and
had destroyed the command post. The mess hall and post office had been
flattened. Another bomb had hit one of the rearming pits near the airstrip, setting
off several bombs and killing four men. Several bombs had cratered the runway,
although the damage to the strip was relatively minor overall.54
On Sand Island, bombs had hit the water lines, as well as a trio of oil
storage tanks, which were left burning heavily. Various base facilities on the
eastern side of the island near the seaplane facilities–the laundry, dispensary,
Navy mess hall and galley, brig, and contractor’s buildings–had all been
destroyed. The torpedo and bombsight maintenance sheds had both been blown
apart. Several of the barracks were badly damaged, and the seaplane hangar had
been burned down to a bare steel skeleton.55 The island had been surmounted by
a heavy column of black smoke when Tomonaga’s men had left.
The various staff officers probably perceived that Tomonaga’s initial terse
radio report had gotten closer to the nub of the matter than any of the wildly
optimistic reports emanating from S ry ’s squadron room. The enemy’s fighter
power had been badly shattered, but his strike planes had already left to attack
Kid Butai before the morning raid had hit home. Not only that, but until the
American antiaircraft weapons were destroyed, delivering effective tactical
support to the Army and Naval landing forces on N-Day would be next to
impossible. A second strike was clearly going to be needed to accomplish the
goal of neutralizing the target’s defenses. All of that, though, would have to wait
until the enemy task force was destroyed.
Unfortunately, Tomonaga’s losses had been heavy, making the job in front
of Kid Butai even more difficult. Hiry ’s attack unit had suffered the worst of
all the carriers. Her fighter group had returned all nine planes, though two of
them were deemed unfit for service. Her Kank squadron, though, had been
decimated. Of the seventeen planes in the group (after PO1c Takahashi Toshio’s
abort), two had been shot down outright by fighters, and another by AA over
Midway itself. A fourth had disappeared en route home.56 WO Nonaka Satoru’s
Kank couldn’t quite make it back to the ship, ditching near a cruiser, though he
and his crew were recovered. Five more aircraft had been shot up so badly as to
be unserviceable. These included Tomonaga’s plane, which had sustained a hit
in one of her wing fuel tanks during the initial fracas with the American fighters.
Every one of the remaining aircraft had been hit as well, though their damage
was minor. In total, this left precisely eight serviceable aircraft (including
Takahashi’s) in Hiry ’s inventory. Hiry had also taken on board a straggler
from S ry piloted by PO2c Tanabe Masanao. His Kank had only barely made
it back to the fleet and had set down on the closest flight deck he could find,
after which it had been written off.
Hiry –s division mate S ry had fared better, though probably more by
luck than anything else. Besides Tanabe’s battered Kank , the group had lost
one plane shot down over Midway, and two more had ditched near destroyers
after struggling back to the fleet. The ditched crews were both rescued. Of the
remaining fourteen Kank that landed on the carrier, four were judged out of
commission. This left ten for future operations, although all of these had been
damaged to some degree as well. Her nine fighters, amazingly, had returned
completely unscathed.
In CarDiv 1, Akagi had lost a fighter shot down by AA over Eastern Island.
Three more Zeros had been damaged to some degree. All of her dive-bombers
had landed safely, though one was so badly damaged as to be out of commission,
and four more were damaged to some extent. Kaga’s fighter unit had been
knocked about as well. One plane had been shot down over Midway. And even
despite PO1c Tanaka gallantly managing to land his plane before he died, his
bird was too badly damaged to be usable. Kaga’s kanbaku squadron had lost a
single bomber shot down over Sand Island.
The total casualties to the Midway strike force was eleven aircraft lost, with
another fourteen heavily damaged, and twenty-nine more shot up to some
degree. Fully half the aircraft involved had been hit. Counting missing aircraft
and those rendered out of commission, the mission had lost 23 percent of its
strength in about thirty minutes of combat. Twenty aviators were dead or
missing, and several more had been wounded. The Kank crews on board
CarDiv 2 must have been stunned. Between the American fighters and the flak,
their formations had been decimated. Four had been shot down, four more
damaged so badly they had to ditch, and another nine put out of commission
after they made it back. Every other Kank in CarDiv 2 had been damaged to
some extent. In the ready rooms, the talk was grim. If this sort of defensive fire
(and casualty rate) was going to be the norm when flying against the Americans,
the carrier attack squadrons would be totally annihilated in the course of a
couple more strikes. This did not bode well for coming operations.
11

Fatal Complications–0917–1020

At 0917, with the strike aircraft being struck below, Admiral Nagumo altered
his course slightly to 070, still at battle speed 3 (twenty-two knots), to close the
enemy, which he believed lay directly ahead. The sky had now been clear of
enemy aircraft since about 0840. If that happy state of affairs continued, it would
soon be possible to start spotting the counterstrike. It seems almost certain that
this is what Nagumo had in mind. It is quite probable that CarDiv 2 began
bringing at least some 242-kg high explosive and 250-kg semi armor-piercing
bombs out of the magazines at this time, so as to have them near to hand when
the dive-bombers were finally spotted.1 On S ry , it would have been possible
to bring this ordnance all the way to the flight deck, but there is no evidence that
this was done. It is more likely that Hiry and S ry both simply brought their
ordnance to the hangars in anticipation of spotting.
Most accounts of the battle hold that rearming activities were still
continuing on CarDiv 1 at this time. Because of this, Fuchida later claimed that
the force would not have been ready to launch before 1030.2 The Nagumo
Report anticipated that CarDiv 1 would be ready to go by 1030, and CarDiv 2
sometime between 1030 and 1100.3 Upon closer examination, it is difficult to
support the notion that rearming CarDiv 1 would have taken so long. It was now
almost an hour and a half since the order had been issued to countermand the
thirty to forty-five minutes’ worth of rearming that had occurred before 0800.
Even despite the occasionally violent maneuvers the ships had participated in, it
is difficult to imagine that rearming had not been fully completed, and that all of
CarDiv 1’s Type 97 aircraft were now armed with torpedoes. Thus, Nagumo
ought to have had sufficient armed and fueled aircraft to attack the enemy with
all four of his carriers, if he could find the time to spot them.
However, no sooner had Kid Butai changed course than a new flight of
enemy aircraft was sighted at 0918, coming in fine on the port bow. Nagumo’s
reaction to the new aircraft sightings is not recorded, but it cannot have been a
happy one. Fuchida speaks of the mood on the bridge suddenly losing its
optimism, but one can’t help but imagine a singularly more negative scene
unfolding on Akagi’s bridge: one of enormous frustration that events were
conspiring against them.
Both Tone and Chikuma immediately began laying smoke. The fleet
increased speed and readied itself for AA action, although the enemy was still
some thirty-five kilometers away. The CAP force, having surged briefly to
thirty-six fighters, was back down to eighteen Zeros. Kaga, however, had two
shotai warming up on deck under the command of Lt. Iizuka Masao and
promptly sent them aloft at 0920. Akagi was in the process of spotting five more
Zeros, which would go up at 0932, and a further foursome at 0937.
This new attack was being delivered by the fifteen torpedo bombers of
Hornet’s VT-8, under Lt. Cdr. John C. Waldron. These were the only aircraft
from Hornet that would make it into the fight this morning. As was related
previously, rather than flying directly toward the last-known position of the
Japanese, Hornet’s planes had flown west after takeoff, on the decision of their
air group leader, Commander Stanhope Ring (commanding VS-8, VB-8, VF-8,
and VT-8). However, Waldron–an intense, hard-driving commander, whose men
revered him despite the hard work he put them through–was certain that the
Japanese lay to the southwest. He had remarked to one of his men before launch
to “Just follow me. I’ll take you to ’em.”4 That was precisely what he was doing
now.
Waldron hadn’t been happy with Ring’s flight plan from the get-go, and he
had not been long in challenging Ring’s outbound route. Waldron had broken
formation at around 0825, banking left, and leading his squadron away
independently.5 The fact that Waldron subsequently closed Kid Butai from
almost dead ahead (i.e., from the northeast) is further indication that Ring’s
flight path was headed due west, and thus missed Nagumo to the north.6
Whether by his part-Cherokee intuition or just a fine appreciation of the
enemy, Waldron’s instincts were spot on. Waldron seems to have flown a course
of 246 degrees, which led almost straight to Nagumo once the latter came to 070.
Waldron’s flight had traversed the 140-odd miles to Kid Butai “as if connected
by a plumb line.”7 However, while Waldron’s instincts were to be lauded, in
leaving Ring’s command behind, he discarded any hope of direct fighter support.
In so doing, he unknowingly signed his own death warrant–and that of every
man in his command save one.
As Waldron’s planes bored in, Kid Butai’s carriers began swinging to
port, turning westward. This had the effect of putting their sterns to the enemy’s
line of approach, a maneuver they would use time and again when faced with
torpedo attacks. When VT-8 began its attack, the carriers were still turning, and
their starboard beams were exposed. Three carriers were directly in front of
Waldron, what his squadron report would later characterize as an “Akagi-class”
type on the right and the left, with a “S ry -type” in the middle.8 Waldron
headed for the center flattop.
The S ry -class carrier in the center was none other than S ry herself. She
was at this very moment bringing on board a shotai of fighters, and was thus
relatively vulnerable. However, the Zeros aloft at this moment contained a
veritable murderer’s row of hot pilots. Akagis Ono Zenji had just returned to the
flagship to replenish his bird, but his two wingmen from the fifth watch were
still airborne. Joining them was Akagi’s sixth watch-a pair of two-plane shotai
led by two first-class petty officers: Taniguchi Masao and Iwashiro Yoshio.
Taniguchi was destined to become a notable ace, with fourteen kills by the end
of the war.9 Kaga now had nine planes in the air, including her fourth watch
under PO1c Yamamoto Akira. Yamamoto was one of the most senior NCO
pilots in the fleet and would go on to claim thirteen enemy aircraft during the
conflict.10 In addition, Kaga’s fifth watch had just been launched–a double-
fisted pair of shotai under the overall command of Lt. Iizuka Masao, who was to
command several squadrons during the war. Iizuka’s shotai also contained PO1c
(later WO) Suzuki Kiyonobu, another highly experienced NCO and instructor
pilot. A decorated veteran of the China conflict, Suzuki would be credited with
nine planes shot down before his death at the Battle of Santa Cruz later that
year.11
S ry had her own fighters up as well; a trio of Zeros from the morning
strike that had yet to land.12 Likewise, Hiry also had Lt. Mori Shigeru’s sh tai
aloft. In all, the Japanese sent twenty-one fighters tearing toward the Americans,
with Akagi and Hiry spotting a further nine between them to be launched
shortly. Not only was Kid Butai’s CAP relatively sizable to the task, but it also
had been alerted in plenty of time. Worse yet for the Americans, their TBD
aircraft were underpowered and barely able to break 100 knots while lugging a
torpedo.
The results reflected these realities. VT-8 was completely annihilated.
Initially, Waldron split his force into two divisions, one under himself and the
other led by his XO, Lt. James C. Owens Jr. However, immediate pressure from
the Japanese CAP forced the two groups of American planes back together in
short order, with Zeros attacking from all sides.13 By all accounts, Iizuka’s
shotai (containing Suzuki), Yamamoto’s trio, and Taniguchi’s quartet literally
tore the American force apart in a series of vicious close-quarter attacks, sending
the lumbering bombers blazing down to the ocean below.14
The Japanese fleet had turned and was running west, so as to place VT-8 at
a further disadvantage. As a result, the American run-in lasted perhaps fifteen
minutes, which was an eternity for the plodding TBDs. Three of them, however,
eventually managed to get close enough to S ry to oblige her to make a sharp
turn to starboard, into the teeth of the American attack.15 In the midst of this
turn, the CAP nailed two more of the Americans, leaving a single damaged plane
aloft. This lone aircraft bored in and made its drop against S ry s port bow at
about 800 yards, then banked to hop over the carrier. S ry , though, managed to
dodge the incoming fish. On the other side of her, the lone Devastator ran
headlong into Akagi’s newly launched seventh patrol, led by Lt. Shirane Ayao.
With the odds five on one, the enemy torpedo plane was quickly shot down
almost in the middle of the formation. The pilot, Ens. George H. Gay, was the
sole American survivor of the attack. His backseat gunner had been killed by
machine-gun fire, and he clambered out of his sinking aircraft as it skidded into
the water. Promptly hiding under his black rubber seat cushion, Gay managed to
avoid being seen by the Japanese ships surrounding him on all sides.
One of the most disheartening aspects of VT-8’s destruction is that they
might have unintentionally had direct fighter support had things gone a little
differently. High above and behind them, hovering at 22,000 feet just over the
eastern fringe of the Japanese formation, were ten Wildcat fighters of VF-6
under the command of Lt. James Gray. Upon being launched by Enterprise, he
had found that her dive-bombers had already flown out of sight. He had
thereupon mistaken Waldron’s low-flying aircraft as his own VT-6.16 Since
Waldron’s flight appeared to be alone, Gray had decided to fly top cover for
them.

11-1: VT-8 attacks Kid Butai,0920-0937.

Unbeknownst to Waldron, Gray had dutifully followed VT-8 down from
the northeast. However, he wasn’t flying terribly close escort, and he lost the
TBDs below intermediate cloud cover just before Waldron began easing down to
make his attack.17 When Waldron’s command disappeared, and subsequently did
not reappear, Gray had no way of knowing that their attack had been
unsuccessful. He had simply never seen them again, nor did he hear their calls
for help. Not only that, but Gray and his command were subsequently to miss
their own VT-6’s call for assistance some twenty minutes later. The date of 4
June will forever remain as something less than a shining monument to
American radio reception.
Like Waldron, Gray had sighted Japanese vessels at one o’clock at about
0910, and he had checked his forward progress. So far as he knew, Enterprise’s
dive-bombers ought to be close at hand, and thus Gray had loitered on the edge
of a battle he wasn’t even aware of, in order to be available to support his dive-
bombers when the moment came.18 From where he circled, Gray was able to
catch glimpses of Kid Butai through the clouds. However, apparently at no time
during the next forty-five minutes did he ever see more than two Japanese
carriers–a clear indication that CarDiv 2 was operating at a goodly distance from
CarDiv 1 during much of that time.
 In fact, the evidence suggests that by about this time CarDiv 2 and CarDiv
1 had effected a de facto, if not an intentional, separation from one another. This
makes a good deal of sense, in that the operational speed of CarDiv 2 was a good
five to seven knots faster than CarDiv 1–if anyone was going to open up a gap, it
would have been the speedier ships at the front of the formation. The Imperial
Navy didn’t mind having fairly loose spacing between their carrier divisions, and
Zuikaku’s experience at Coral Sea, wherein she had been spared attack by
fortuitously not being too close to Sh kaku, had been noted by the Japanese.
Indeed, beyond mere reasons of defensive expediency, it is possible that a desire
for operational separation may have entered into the last-minute adjustments of
Kid Butai’s formation this morning.
For his part, Gray continued loitering high above Kid Butai’s eastern
flank, making leisurely “S” turns to conserve fuel, and waiting for Enterprise’s
dive-bombers to join him. He found it remarkable that there were no Zeros
coming after him.19 To Gray, it seemed that there must have been a breakdown
in the Japanese CAP. The truth was that at 0910 the CAP was all at low level,
and shortly would be pouncing on Waldron. However, the Japanese failure to
discover and attempt to intercept Gray’s command until much later does speak
of the Japanese weakness at detecting and combating high-level threats,
particularly in conditions of scattered cloud cover.

No one knew it at the time, but the truth was that Kid Butai had just reached a
crucial point of no return. If the Japanese were to launch aircraft against the
Americans before their rendezvous with fate–now only an hour hence–they
would have needed to start spotting them in the teeth of Waldron’s attack. Yet,
Nagumo still had no clear idea of exactly where the American carriers were,
since Tone No. 4’s spotting information was apparently not considered
trustworthy. Not only that, but S ry ’s Type 2 bomber had not radioed in any
new information, either.
This was, in fact, VT-8’s true contribution to the battle, and the meaning of
its sacrifice–not (as commonly asserted) that it had drawn the CAP Zeros down
to sea level. Rather, Waldron’s head-on attack caused Nagumo to reverse course
out of the wind. It also delayed his spotting by tying down the Japanese flight
decks with yet more CAP operations. CruDiv 8’s laying smoke in reaction to
Waldron’s appearance, as well as the force’s antiaircraft fire thereafter, may also
have attracted the unwanted attentions of yet another American torpedo
squadron that was shortly to make its appearance.
It is probable that at this point (or perhaps even sooner) the kanbaku on
CarDiv 2 had begun to be armed while still in the hangars.20 Realizing that the
flight decks were in constant operation, the armorers were going ahead and
attaching bombs to their charges. If nothing else, it would shave five or ten
minutes off the spotting process, whenever that was ordered. But as long as the
Americans kept attacking, and new CAP fighters were needed, no one knew
when that might be.
Far to the southwest of Kid Butai, destroyer Arashi was still prowling
fretfully in search of the elusive Nautilus. Starting at 0918, Lt. Cdr. William
Brockman had dived to 200 feet, trying to shake the Japanese destroyer, but
Arashi remained on the scent. At 0933 she made a final depth-charge attack. At
that point, Commander Watanabe decided that even if he had not nailed the
Yankee submarine, he had held it down long enough for the carriers to have
made it safely through the danger zone. He thereafter set course north-northeast
to rejoin Kid Butai. Ironically, according to Brockman, Arashi’s final pair of
depth charges were the closest to the mark of any dropped thus far.21 But as the
sweating Americans listened below, the attacks died down, and Arashi’s screws
drew away. By 0955 even her echo ranging had ceased. Nautilus began heading
back up to periscope depth.
Meanwhile, Petty Officer Amari and Tone No. 4 were still on the air. In
fact, Amari was begging to break off his mission, reporting at 0930 that his fuel
was running low and that he needed to return. He was told by Admiral Abe at
0935 to wait until 1000 to do so. Amari, probably nearly frantic by this time,
replied at 0938 with a terse “I can’t do it.” In the meantime, Chikuma was
launching its No. 5 aircraft, a Type 0 floatplane commanded by PO1c Takezaki
Masatake, to contact the American fleet.
Depending on the ship concerned, the Japanese logged Waldron’s gallant
attack as petering out between 0930 to 0935. By that time, all of the American
aircraft were in the drink. Kid Butai was still on a course westward for the
moment. Though the carriers remained in a roughly boxlike formation, their
positions had shifted, with Kaga now leading Akagi in the southern column.22
Before the Japanese could consider shifting course back to the northeast, even as
Arashi was dropping her last charges and Chikuma was sending up her No. 5
plane, another attack developed.
At 0938 the Japanese sighted a low line of Devastators coming in from the
south. This was VT-8’s sister squadron, VT-6, from the Enterprise, commanded
by Lt. Cdr. Eugene “Gene” E. Lindsey. Again, their low altitude approach meant
that they were sighted while still a good distance from the fleet. Akagi’s log
avers that she saw the attackers fifty kilometers out. With Kid Butai still
heading west, the Americans were attacking from the port beam.23
 From behind the windscreens of VT-6, the Japanese fleet was in “a very
loose formation and appeared to have three carriers in the center. The outer
screen was on a 15 mile circle and was composed of light cruisers [sic]. The
inner screen was on an 8 mile circle and was composed of heavy cruisers and a
few battleships. Destroyers accompanied each carrier and were present at other
points in the screen. The carriers and accompanying destroyers maneuvered
independently at high speed while the screening ships maintained their relative
positions and were not making such high speeds.”24 This remarkably accurate
description corresponds very closely with the facts. The four carriers were
indeed in a box formation, albeit one that shifted at times into a ragged diamond.
The two outer circles of screening vessels tended to turn in formation and tried
to maintain their relative positions.
Immediately upon sighting Kid Butai, Lindsey split his squadron into two
divisions of seven planes apiece, hoping to gain a position to deliver a hammer
and anvil attack against one of the carriers.25 His target was Kaga. This was
because VT-8’s attack twenty minutes prior had disrupted any semblance of
order in Kid Butai’s formation. Whatever evasive pirouettes Akagi had
performed during Waldron’s assault–and the indications are that they were both
extensive and swift26 –had not been matched by her dowdier twenty-eight-knot
cousin. This, in combination with the fleet’s reverse turn meant that Kaga was
now the southwestern-most carrier in the formation, and hence the one most
likely to be singled out for VT-6’s unwanted attentions.27
At 0938 Kid Butai predictably commenced wide turns to starboard and
course 300 degrees so as to put the American planes directly astern. Once again,
the TBDs had to first overhaul their prey and then come around the bow for an
attack. Kaga’s turn away also had the effect of leaving Lindsey’s division
hanging out in left field.28 The American commander therefore led his men
around to the north, while Lt. Arthur Ely, his exec, took his division more
directly toward Okada’s towering flight deck.
The one thing VT-6 had going for it, at least initially, was that there were
no Zeros to be seen. In truth, Kaga was in something of a pickle. The CAP was
up to thirty fighters, but most of the Zeros had been pulled off to the northeast to
deal with Waldron’s attack. As a result, this new assault from another quarter
found Kaga’s own fighters out of position, and with few others nearby. Kaga’s
turn away thus served a twofold need. It bought time for Kaga to complete
warming up another set of six fighters. And it gave Captain Okada the chance to
put out the word that a little assistance was in order.
Thus, for a time the Americans came in relatively unopposed. In fact, both
American divisions made it past the outlying Japanese destroyers and were
headed in toward Kaga before the Japanese CAP began to reassert its presence.
Ely’s division, being closest to the bulk of the Japanese fighters racing in from
the east and northeast, not surprisingly came under fire first. Once again, the
same general progression of destruction played itself out, with the Zeros slicing
the American formation apart and spraying the Devastators with well-aimed
bursts of fire. The Americans, unable to do much more than huddle up into
smaller and smaller groups, fired back with their twin free machine guns. But the
end result for Ely’s division, though it took somewhat longer to unfold, could
not help but be grimly similar to that of VT-8.

11-2: VT-6 attacks Kid Butai, 0940-1000.

Overhauling Kaga, poky as she was, proved almost impossible as soon as
the Zeros finally made their appearance. Ely’s formation came apart under the
increasingly heavy deluge of fire. One by one, the Devastators lost their battles
and went flaming into the drink. However, Okada also did his best to maximize
Kaga’s own chances, staging a veritable seminar on how to handle a carrier
against torpedo aircraft. Realizing that he was being pinned between two
divisions, Okada continued boring away to the northwest as long as possible.
Finally, two aircraft of Ely’s division reached their drop points and released.
Okada saw at once that the American drop angles were lousy. Kaga dodged
them with ease, turning away to port and reversing course. This had the effect of
bringing Kaga into the teeth of Lindsey’s group, but Okada reversed course yet
again and continued heading to the north-northwest, with the Americans now
back on his port quarter.
For his part, Lindsey had thus far enjoyed remarkably good success. While
Ely’s men were being shot to pieces, the Japanese CAP hadn’t been able to get a
grip on him. True, there were Zeros around, and they were shooting, but they
seemed to be out of cannon ammunition. Consequently, his group had yet to take
any casualties, and he had managed to attain a position on Kaga’s port beam that
held out some hope of making a good attack. If they had been equipped with the
newer, faster TBFs, they might have made it. But it was at this precise moment
that everything fell apart. Akagi had launched a fresh shotai of fighters under Lt.
Ibusuki Masanobu (his second flight of the morning) at 0945. Kaga, for her part,
finally hurled aloft six of her own Zeros at 1000, into the very teeth of Lindsey’s
final attack run. These Kaga fighters collectively were a somewhat ragtag group
of ensigns and noncoms, but this group contained several seasoned veterans. It
was these nine fresh Zeros that set upon Lindsey in the last minutes before he
was able to gain a favorable attack position.
Lindsey, by this time, was desperately calling for support from his own
fighters but was receiving no answer from Lieutenant Gray’s Wildcats. They
were still loitering high overhead, some twenty miles to the northeast. As with
VT-8, because of the scattered cloud cover in the area and their high altitude,
Gray had not observed VT-6’s attack materializing on the opposite side of the
enemy formation. Nor did he or his men hear Lindsey’s radio calls for help.
Thus, two opportunities for direct fighter support of the American torpedo
aircraft had been lost.
Indeed, by about 0950, the fuel tanks in Gray’s Wildcats had pushed well
past half empty. If he didn’t leave soon, he and his command weren’t going to
make it back. Reluctantly, he turned for home, but not before sending a sighting
report back to Enterprise at 0952, followed by an elaboration at 1000.29 This
report, which explicitly mentioned the presence of only two Japanese carriers,
was the first concrete sighting information that Task Force 16 had received since
it had overheard Howard Ady and William Chase’s PBY spotting reports during
the morning.30 It was only as Gray departed that the Japanese belatedly noticed
the American fighters that had been circling ahead of their force for the better
part of an hour. S ry quickly launched a shotai of Zeros under PO1c Harada
Kaname to go after Gray’s group, which was thought to be a “horizontal
bombing unit.” By the time Harada and his men began to climb, though, Gray
had departed the area.
Meanwhile, Lindsey’s entire division was in terrible trouble. The
commander was apparently the first to be shot down as this last-second
opposition materialized almost out of nowhere. Lindsey’s men kept shooting
back and managed to send Sea1c Sano Shinpei’s Akagi Zero down.31 But four of
the Americans were splashed in short order, and much as they tried, the
remaining three found it impossible to attain a favorable drop angle. Finally, in
desperation, the Americans let fly with their torpedoes at extreme range at about
1000. It was a valiant attempt, but Okada immediately treated them to an evasive
turn back to the south, spoiling the chances of their fish.
The CAP thereupon sent the American survivors packing. Unfortunately for
Lindsey’s remaining men, they were now deep inside the Japanese formation,
making getting out almost as problematic as getting in had been. Indeed, several
VT-6 aircraft were still being attacked as late as 1010 as they were clearing the
area to the east and southeast. Fortunately for the Americans, the wide spacing
between the screening ships created large gaps to fly through. By the time it was
all over, though, only five aircraft from VT-6’s two divisions (three from
Lindsey’s, two from Ely’s) remained aloft, all damaged to some degree, and one
of these would not make it back home.32 Neither Ely nor the dogged Lindsey
was among the survivors.
Despite VT-6’s gallant determination, both U.S. and Japanese analysts
ironically later found fault with the attack. In his own comments on the
squadron’s after-action report, RADM Thomas C. Kinkaid concluded that “it is
essential that the attack be pressed home without delay when the objective has
been sighted.”33 For his part, Genda was inclined to agree with Kinkaid’s basic
assessment. He had watched VT-6 laboriously close on Kaga, with the American
planes being shot down one by one. His professional interest piqued, Genda
remarked that some of the Americans had “apparently hesitated to make a daring
dash [toward us] in the face of attacks from both the air and sea.”34 In this
respect, both Kinkaid and Genda were being critical of what they did not fully
understand. When carrying a one-ton torpedo, “dashing” did not well describe
the Devastator’s handling characteristics.
Given the wretched stern chase it had been forced to make, by all rights
VT-6 should have been annihilated in exactly the same manner as VT-8. But
three factors had spared the lives of at least some of its aviators. First, the attack
had developed along an axis the Japanese CAP was initially ill prepared to
defend. As a result, fighter opposition was spotty at first, especially for
Lindsey’s division. The Americans had made it well into the heart of the
Japanese formation before things began coming unglued.
Second, it was clear that the ability of the Zero to kill American aircraft was
proportional to the amount of 20-mm cannon ammunition available. American
carrier planes, even obsolete ones like the TBD, were quite sturdy. A good hit
from an explosive cannon shell could potentially take one down, but it was much
more difficult to do the same with just 7.7-mm machine gun fire. The Americans
were lucky, in that having hunted Waldron’s men to destruction just twenty
minutes earlier, many of the Japanese fighters had “shot their bolt” and were low
on 20-mm ammo. This undoubtedly spelled salvation for some of VT-6’s
aircraft.
Third, we know that at least some of the American aircraft were spared by
Japanese fighters once they had dropped their torpedoes.35 This hardly reflected
an altruistic spirit on the part of Kid Butai’s aviators. Like fighter pilots on both
sides of this bitter Pacific struggle, they bore no great love for their counterparts
and had already demonstrated this day that they would gladly machine gun
American fliers, even in their parachutes, if the opportunity afforded itself.36 Yet
a TBD that had released its torpedo was no longer an immediate danger to the
fleet, and some of the Japanese pilots at least were apparently being driven to
conserve their ammunition for more worthy targets.
This last point is important, in that it gives a better sense for what the mood
in the fleet probably was at around 1000. It would be tempting at this point in the
proceedings to portray the Japanese attitude toward their enemies as being one of
contempt. After all, aside from the B-17s, they had crushed every American
attack thrown their way. Complacency would certainly appear to have been the
prevalent attitude in the upper command ranks. While there may have been
vexation at the delays imposed in launching the counterstrike, there is no sense
from the accounts of the senior officers that there was any real fear about the
ultimate outcome of the fight. Genda noted that his initial concerns over the
force’s ability to defend itself against American air attacks had now been swept
away by the successful repulsion of Waldron’s and Lindsey’s attacks.37 The
picture one gets is that everyone on Nagumo’s staff felt that they could absorb
whatever attacks the Americans could mete out. True, there may have been
irritation, and even concern at the delay, but a sense of real urgency about the
matter seems to have been lacking. If this was truly their attitude, then it was
founded on a lack of understanding of the capabilities of their opponents, as well
as a failure to comprehend the frailties of an already overstretched air defense
system.
The fact that at this juncture in the battle some of the Japanese CAP pilots
would deliberately let American aircraft escape once they had dropped their
weapons reveals a much different picture. There had to have been some sense
among Kid Butai’s fighter pilots that things were balanced on a bit of a knife’s
edge. The American attacks were incessant and were now beginning to arrive
from different directions. The CAP had little in the way of long-range detection
or guidance from their ships, so they couldn’t simply guard a single “threat
vector” along which the attacks would develop. Instead, the Zero pilots had to
remain vigilant to the possibility of danger developing from almost any quarter.
The CAP was therefore dispersed–roaming around in small elements near their
home vessels, trying to stay alert to the visual cues of the pickets, and then
pouncing on targets that came into their sector.
Further, the CAP had demonstrated that it had a tendency to bunch up. In
several instances, the entire CAP had responded to an incoming attack, leaving
nothing in reserve over other sectors of the fleet. The CAP behaved almost
organically–like white blood cells swarming a toxin. Once the enemy was
engaged by a single shotai, it tended to pull adjacent shotai into the fray almost
magnetically. But there was little calculation in the CAP’s response. If multiple
attacks developed in rapid succession, the CAP’s ability to “snap back” and react
quickly to new threats was limited. This was all symptomatic of the Japanese
lack of adequate fighter direction.
If the launch activities of the morning are any indication, the ship’s captains
and hik ch were keenly aware of these deficiencies. Captain Okada and his
counterparts knew that the only way to react quickly was to keep a sharp lookout
and a brace of fresh fighters on deck that could be launched as new threats
developed. Ammunition depletion only accentuated this risk of overstretching.
Taken together, this couldn’t have been a comfortable position to be in,
especially immediately after repulsing an assault. The result was that the
Japanese pilots (and their appreciation of the dangers Kid Butai was facing than
anyone in Nagumo’s staff.
 Furthermore, it should have been of concern to both Nagumo and his staff
that the fleet was being shoved around by these attacks. The attack by VT-8 had
been equivalent to a stone thrown into a group of pigeons, blowing apart Kid
Butai’s formation and forcing it west. The attack by VT-6 had been a longer,
more grinding affair. Nagumo and his carriers had had little choice but to run
northwest for a full twenty minutes. Thus, a perceptive observer would have
noticed that Japanese control over the flow of events was almost nonexistent.
They were trying to recapture the initiative, but in truth they were still in
“reaction mode.” This was no way to win a battle.
Nevertheless, at 1000, with his ships now turning onto their new heading of
030, Nagumo sent an upbeat report of the battle to Yamamoto, Kond ,
submarine commander Komatsu, and Tanaka’s Invasion Force. “Carried out air
attack of AF at 0630. Many enemy shore-based planes attacked us subsequent to
0715. We have suffered no damages. At 0728, enemy composed of 1 carrier, 7
cruisers and 5 destroyers sighted in (grid) position TO SHI RI 34, on course
southwest, speed 20 knots. After destroying this [force], we plan to resume our
AF attack. Our position at 1000 is (grid) HE E A 00, course 30 degrees, speed 24
knots.”
This message captures both Nagumo’s spirit and his intentions less than
twenty minutes before total disaster overtook him. Kid Butai was closing with
the enemy. In the hangars of all four carriers, the arming process was surely
complete, and they were waiting only for the go-ahead to start spotting the flight
decks. Forty-five minutes after that, launch would be possible. It was true that
the tempo of CAP operations had forestalled this action longer than Nagumo had
wished. Still, in Nagumo’s mind, the picture seemed to be improving now that
Kaga had shaken off the last of her attackers.

Unbeknownst to Admiral Nagumo, just as VT-6 was in the final minutes of its
ordeal, Kid Butai had been sighted by two new, and entirely separate,
American aircraft formations. The first was Enterprise’s entire dive-bomber
group, under CV-6’s air group commander, Lt. Cdr. Clarence Wade McClusky
Jr. He was currently leading two squadrons: Scouting Six (under Lt. Wilmer Earl
Gallaher) and Bombing Six, (under Lt. Richard Halsey Best). McClusky’s group
was approaching Kid Butai from the southwest at an altitude of 19,000 feet.38
This had come about in a completely unanticipated fashion. McClusky had set
out from Enterprise at 0752, on course 231 degrees, expecting Nagumo to have
continued on toward Midway. As such, he ought to have intercepted the
Japanese about 142 miles out. Because of the delays in Enterprise’s flight
operations, however, his thirty-three SBDs were on their own, with no fighter
escort once Lieutenant Gray followed after Waldron’s VT-8. Contact was
swiftly lost with VT-6’s fourteen TBDs following behind, as Lindsey apparently
split the distance between McClusky’s flight and Waldron’s, opting for a course
of about 240 degrees, which turned out to be a more or less direct line to the
enemy.
As it developed, Nagumo’s movement east at 0832 had the effect of leaving
Enterprise’s dive-bombers too far south on their outbound route. This was
further complicated by Kid Butai’s turn to east-northeast at 0917, although VT-
8’s attack soon shoved the fleet back westward. McClusky had hoped to sight
the Japanese at about 0920. But by then, Kid Butai was, in fact, nearly due west
of his group, at approximately his two o’clock position, and was currently
running west itself. Cruising along at 20,000 feet, the cloud cover never allowed
the Americans so much as a peep of the Japanese.
By 0930 McClusky knew he was directly over where Nagumo’s projected
course track ought to have taken his fleet. He saw nothing. Therefore, per his
plan, at 0935 he turned to 315 degrees to fly up the approach course of the
enemy. He intended to follow this reciprocal route for some fifty miles, until
1000. At that point, he would alter course northeast, fly a short distance, and
then reluctantly head for home. Fuel was already getting low, and he didn’t have
all day. McClusky was banking that this rather basic search pattern would bring
him at least a glimpse of the Japanese fleet. He eventually caught the glimpse he
was hoping for, but it so happened that it was of only a tiny portion of Nagumo’s
fleet.
At 0955 McClusky spied the wake of a lone ship, northeast of him and
headed over the horizon in the same direction. It was kicking up a very
pronounced bow wave and moving fast.39 He identified it as a cruiser. In fact, it
was Arashi, which had been keeping Nautilus’s head down. Having broken off
her attack fifteen minutes earlier, she was scrambling to return to the task force.
Reasoning that this ship would lead him to the Japanese carriers, McClusky
made to overhaul her from the southwest. At 1000 he was rewarded with the
sight of many wakes dead ahead through the scattered clouds, some thirty-five
miles ahead. At 1002 he radioed Raymond Spruance the electrifying news: “This
is McClusky. Have sighted the enemy.”40
Meanwhile, to the east of McClusky, a group of aircraft from Yorktown was
also entering the battlefield. This formation consisted of VT-3 (under Lt. Cdr.
Lance E. “Lem” Massey), VB-3 (led by Lt. Cdr. Maxwell F. Leslie), and VF-3
(under Lt. Cdr. John Smith “Jimmy” Thach). It will be recalled that the other
American carrier aircraft formations had traveled outward in small groups and
then been separated. Not so those of Yorktown, the most experienced of the
American carriers. Because of careful planning, her group had remained closely
coordinated, with each of the tactical elements remaining in sight of each other
up until the time they initiated their attack. All three groups had been droning
along on 240 degrees. At 1003 one of VT-3’s crewmen spied smoke off to the
northwest. VT-3, VB-3, and Thach’s six accompanying fighters all turned right
to approach the enemy. Thus, for the first time in the battle, an American carrier
air group had the very real possibility of delivering a coordinated high-low
assault against the enemy.
The effect of these totally unrelated sightings was to place Kid Butai in
grave danger. By dint of a healthy dollop of bad luck, the Japanese were now
effectively placed between an enormous hammer and anvil. Previously, lone
American squadrons–attacking without support or the benefit of combined
arms–had divided into two elements so as to try and catch single Japanese
carriers between their attacking groups. This time the Americans were bringing
four attack squadrons to the fight–three dive-bomber units and a torpedo
squadron. More important, the American air groups were approaching along two
separate axes, and yet were fortuitously arriving over the target at roughly the
same time. Three of the American squadrons were coming in at high altitude,
another fairly low, and there were even some fighters thrown in for good
measure. This was far and away the most challenging threat the Japanese had
faced all morning. And it was against this attack that Japanese air defenses
would finally and catastrophically fail.

11-3: American air attacks on Kid Butai,0920-1020. This illustration shows
how the Japanese carrier formation was shoved in new directions as a result of
the ongoing American air attacks.

It’s worth taking a moment to comment on the shape of the Japanese carrier
formation at about 1000. With Kaga out of immediate danger, Nagumo ordered
Kid Butai to resume a northeast course of 030. Once again, the four carriers
turned in their tracks to comply with their new orders. Out on the eastern edge of
the carrier group, CarDiv 2 had effectively been isolated from VT-6’s attack.
Hiry and S ry had loped northwest, roughly abreast, paralleling CarDiv 1’s
movements as the American attack had developed. Now, with another turn to the
northeast, CarDiv 2 was placed in the van of the carrier group once more. S ry ,
as the easternmost carrier during the run northwest, was now in the front of the
carrier formation, with Hiry trailing her. Behind, the two carriers of CarDiv 1
brought up the rear, with Akagi off of Kaga’s starboard bow, but on roughly the
same east-west line.
All semblance of a box formation had by now disappeared. Instead,
Nagumo’s carriers were strung out in a rough line ahead to the northeast. The
distance between the two carrier divisions was almost certainly greater than
7,000 meters, and that between the lead ship (S ry ) and Kaga (the most
westerly) was probably more than 15,000 meters. Eyewitness accounts on board
S ry at this time mention CarDiv 1 as being little more than vague blocky
smudges on the horizon. Likewise, a diagram drawn by a S ry survivor shows
S ry at the apex of a triangle, with Kaga on its left bottom corner and Akagi on
its right bottom, which broadly fits the same picture.41
This positioning of S ry at the fore of the formation at 1000 stands in
contrast with every preceding history of the battle, which universally have Hiry
in the lead. Indeed, it has always been supposed that the only reason Hiry
escaped the coming attack was because she was far enough in front of the rest of
the carriers that she avoided the attention of Yorktown’s dive-bombers, which
presumably came in from the southeast. However, a careful reading of the
Nagumo Report and other evidence from both the American and Japanese side
leads to a much different picture.42 These matters are intriguing and important,
for the exact shape and heading of Nagumo’s carriers in this time frame has been
the source of considerable disagreement down through the years. For the
moment, we ask the reader to simply hold these thoughts, as the subsequent ten
minutes, and the developing attacks of the Americans, will shed additional light
on why this configuration for Kid Butai makes better sense than previous
renditions.

11-4: Kid Butai formation at 1000, after change to course 030. The fleet at this
time had been so distorted as to no longer really resemble a box formation at all,
but rather a ragged line ahead, with Kaga trailing on the port quarter.

VT-6’s survivors were still desperately struggling to escape the battlefield
as VT-3’s attack began materializing. At 1006 flagship Akagi spotted torpedo
bombers some forty-five km distant at a heading of 118 degrees True, off the
starboard beam. Whether her lookouts also glimpsed the American fighters and
dive-bombers that were almost directly over VT-3 at this same time is open to
speculation, but it is likely they did not. Captain Aoki apparently judged VT-3’s
threat to be distant enough that he could afford to make a brief digression to the
east to land some fighters. Akagi turned to course 090 at 1010 and brought down
three Zeros from her fifth and sixth watches. However, as the American torpedo
planes continued boring in, Akagi turned her stern to them and headed northwest.
As soon as the fighters were stowed, Aoki ordered another shotai of Zeros
spotted on deck and warmed up.43 If this new American attack was of similar
magnitude to the ones just before, Akagi might need to defend herself shortly.
On Akagi’s air-control platform, hik ch Masuda was having, in his own words,
“One hell of a long day!”44
It has been commonly supposed that VT-3’s attack preceded that of the
Yorktown dive-bombers by a good bit. However, more recent scholarship on the
American side of the battle has confirmed that VT-3’s assault lasted longer than
previously thought and culminated after the dive-bomber attack.45 Like all the
American torpedo attacks this morning, the fact that the TBDs were so slow
meant that the attack took a while to develop. Not only that, but VT-3 would
subsequently switch targets during its run in, lengthening the overall
engagement. Indeed, some of the American dive-bomber pilots stated that after
bombing Kaga and Akagi, they witnessed aircraft from VT-3 still heading
northward to attack their target. For their part, the Japanese also saw the torpedo
aircraft as part of a nearly simultaneous, continuous attack.
The Japanese CAP at 1010 consisted of thirty-six fighters, though shortly it
would be up to forty-two. Many of these aircraft were undoubtedly still clustered
near Kaga or engaged southeast of the fleet chasing VT-6’s remnants. And as
mentioned previously, S ry s fifth patrol, under PO1c Harada, was heading east
and climbing to chase after Gray’s recently departed Wildcats. Shortly, however,
Harada would bring his men about to confront the new threat developing to the
southeast. Thus, the bulk of Kid Butai’s fighters were likely distributed in a belt
stretching roughly northwest to southeast across the force.
The appearance of VT-3 undoubtedly attracted the CAP’s attention, as the
Zeros then chasing VT-6 out ran headlong into the new attackers.46 Heavy
cruiser Chikuma thereupon began banging away with her main battery to attract
the attention of the rest of the CAP. If the accounts of the American aviators in
VT-3 and VF-3 are to be believed, thereafter the southeast axis very quickly
filled up with Zeros.
By 1011 Akagi was running northwest. There is every reason to believe the
other three carriers of Kid Butai were following suit, or would shortly do so.47
In truth, though, Massey had apparently never intended to attack CarDiv 1, but
instead sent his squadron more to the north after S ry . At 1015, seeing the
attack developing, S ry sent up PO1c Sugiyama Takeo’s sixth watch of three
fighters. Hiry had launched PO1c Hino Masato’s CAP shotai (watch number
5C) two minutes earlier, at 1013. Thereupon, both carriers of CarDiv 2 had
turned away from the American attackers as well.48

11-5: Kid Butai immediately before attack. The carriers are in a loose line
abreast, with the two carrier divisions widely separated. Positions of the other
vessels are approximate (at best) and not necessarily to scale.

By 1015 or so, all four of Nagumo’s flattops were running to the northwest.
Akagi and Kaga were chugging along at twenty-two knots. Hiry and S ry ,
however, being on the receiving end of VT-3’s attack, were running flat out at
thirty-four knots.49 Kid Butais formation was still a ragged line, but now it was
a line abreast, stretched from southwest to northeast–a formation that was
remarked upon by several American aviators. VB-6 observed the carriers
running in a rough row from southwest to northeast, while VB-3 saw a row
running more east to west.50 From VB-6’s point of view, the line stretched away
to the north, with each carrier showing its port side to the incoming pilots. VB-3,
however, saw the sterns of all the carriers as they were spread out in line abreast
from left to right across their windscreens.
S ry was at the far right-hand end of the line, the most northerly of the
carriers, and possibly the most easterly as well. Akagi and Kaga were the
southernmost pair, separated from CarDiv 2 by a good stretch of water. The two
ships of CarDiv 1 were arrayed on a rough parallel east-west, with Kaga the
most westerly. From the vantage point of Akagi’s bridge, CarDiv 2 was off the
starboard beam, and perhaps slightly astern. Kaga was plowing ahead off of
Akagi’s port bow.51 This jibes exactly with the diagram drawn by a civilian
cameraman on board Akagi, which showed Kaga ahead of Akagi and to port. It
also corresponds with the recollections of S ry s crewmen, who would see Kaga
off to port when she was attacked.52 The two battleships, probably in reaction to
VT-6’s attack, had shifted formation such that they were off either beam of
Akagi.53 Meanwhile, destroyer Arashi, unaware of the enemy interlopers
following her from above, was finally closing on the flagship, bearing 234 from
Akagi at 1011.54
Kid Butais turning away from VT-3 also signaled the arrival of the first
serious opposition to Massey’s torpedo attack, in the form of numerous Zeros.
VT-3 was eventually to be subjected to the same brutal handling that had been
meted out to every American torpedo attack this morning. But for the first time
in the battle, Kid Butai’s CAP was confronted by American fighters. These
were six Wildcats under the command of Jimmy Thach. Two of his fighters were
flying 500 feet above and directly behind Massey’s command, which was itself
cruising at 2,500 feet. Thach’s own foursome trailed further behind, and some
2,000 feet higher.55
It was against the American fighter escorts that the Zeros first committed
themselves. In short order, Thach found himself confronted by an estimated
fifteen to twenty.56 So many Japanese fighters lined up against him that they had
to take turns in order to attack efficiently. Thach quickly lost one of his planes to
an attack delivered from below. Initially, he tried leading his group down to
support Massey, but the faster Zeros never gave him a chance, penning the
American Wildcats in before they could make a move. It looked like another
quick, routine victory for Kid Butai’s kansen pilots was shaping up.
At this juncture, faced with a truly desperate situation, Jimmy Thach boldly
bet his life, and those of his men, on a new defensive tactic that he had been
mulling over for several months. Despite not having had a chance to brief both
of his remaining compatriots on his defensive formation, he managed to
implement it anyway–the first combat usage of what was to become famously
known as the “Thach Weave.” For the next twenty-five minutes, Thach’s two-
element division was under constant attack by a bevy of Zeros. The three
Wildcats used his weaving tactic almost constantly to shoo them away from each
other’s tails and to take snapshots at their assailants as they closed briefly on
head-on bearings.
The results of this prolonged encounter were nothing short of shocking to
the Japanese. Not only was Thach able to save his own life and his two
remaining aviators, but he personally succeeded in shooting down three Zeros in
the process. One of his wingmen took down another.57 To this point in the war,
aerial combat had been pretty much a one-way street for Zero pilots–they dished
it out, and the enemy died. Not so this time, as the Japanese grappled in
increasing frustration with how to get an edge over the constantly maneuvering
Grummans. This was perhaps the first concrete instance in the war in which
American fighters demonstrated that they were taking the measure of their
Japanese opposite numbers. It was a sensation that Nagumo’s kansen pilots
cannot have relished.
Meanwhile, VT-3 was proceeding northwest away from Thach, and the
Japanese CAP was having similar, though less-protracted difficulties with the
pair of Wildcats still flying close cover for the torpedo planes. One of the two
American fighters, flown by Mach. Thomas F. Cheek, nailed S ry s PO3c
Kawamata Teruo almost immediately as he made a run on Massey’s
Devastators. Thereafter, though, the sheer number of Zeros first pried Cheek and
his wingman, Ens. Daniel C. Sheedy, away from VT-3, and then eventually
away from each other as well. The two American fighters were badly shot up in
the process, but both had managed to escape by alternately ducking into clouds
and diving down to hug the waves. In the process, Sheedy got into a wave-top
tangle with another Zero and managed to kill it by getting the Japanese pilot to
lose control of his aircraft and dip his wing into the water, cartwheeling him to
his death.
By about 1020, VT-3 was finally deprived of its fighter cover. However,
Massey had some altitude to play with, and as soon as the Zeros had hit Cheek
and Sheedy, he had taken his squadron into a shallow dive, trading altitude for
some additional speed.58 This, in combination with the undue attention being
visited on the American Wildcats, meant that VT-3 lost only a single aircraft
during this juncture, that of Ens. Wesley Frank Osmus. VT-3 was able to
proceed in good order, subjected to only minimal harassment from a few Zeros.
However, Massey could probably see fresh fighters being sent up by S ry and
subsequently turned his aircraft to close on Hiry , which was somewhat to the
southwest and seemed to be a little more attainable.59
What makes this interesting is that VT-3 was flying slow-moving aircraft,
at fairly low altitude, and with a limited field of view. In such circumstances, it
is probable that they altered course to attack the closest target they could find.
Yet at the same time, the common wisdom has always maintained that Hiry
was spared from the forthcoming dive-bombing because of her distance from
VB-3, whose faster-moving aircraft were supposedly boring in right behind VT-
3. Had Hiry been in the van of the carrier formation, Massey’s target selection
would have made little sense, as he would have been opting for a ship that was
allegedly far more distant. Clearly, something in the common wisdom doesn’t
hang together. Either the shape of the Japanese formation was different than has
been supposed (and Hiry was located somewhere other than in the lead of the
pack), or the VT-3/VB-3 attack developed in a different manner than has been
previously portrayed. In fact, the answer was a little bit of both. It was S ry that
lay to the north, with Hiry south of her. And, as we shall see shortly, the attack
from Yorktown’s dive-bombers ultimately developed from a different quarter
than that of her torpedo bombers.
It took a while for Hiry s and S ry s recently launched fighters to make
their presence felt against Massey. In fact, it was not until his formation had
closed to within a couple of miles of Hiry that things began coming unglued. At
this juncture, though, Kid Butai’s fighters smashed into VT-3 with enormous
violence. Prominent among the Zeros again was S ry s Lt. Fujita Iyozo, now
flying his third sortie of the morning. Fujita had missed breakfast before the
morning strike and hadn’t had a chance to grab a bite of lunch the last time he’d
been on board S ry , either.60 He was exhausted and hungry, a state probably
not unlike many of his companions at this moment. His wingmen had
disappeared, perhaps having been drawn into Thach’s flying circus, leaving
Fujita to press his early attacks alone. His perseverance paid off, though, as he
succeeded in downing four of the attackers.61
Within seconds of the arrival of the CAP, Japanese fighters were positively
swarming over Massey’s shrinking formation, raining destruction on their
hapless opponents with murderously precise runs. Once again, the TBDs
lumbered ahead, spitting back fire at their assailants, and occasionally scoring.
However, Fujita and crew began running up the score on their victims in short
order. Massey’s plane went flaming into the water almost immediately, and the
American formation blew apart into two sections. The first division was
decimated, leaving just one plane in the air. The second division was luckier, if
such a phrase can be used to describe a near massacre, with four of its members
being left to attack Hiry .
But what of VB-3, which had started the engagement within visual range of
VT-3? Given their higher speed, if the American dive-bombers had come
straight in behind the TBDs, they should by all rights have arrived over the
Japanese almost simultaneously, and from out of the southeast. However, this
did not happen. Lt. Cdr. Leslie had seen Massey turn to the north and had indeed
followed the torpedo bombers for a time. However, he did not want to alert
Massey’s target until he was in a position to directly support the torpedo attack.
Accordingly, Leslie led his force north, along the eastern flank of the Japanese
formation, so as to achieve a favorable attack position upwind of the target. This
had the effect of extending VB-3’s transit time as they made their way around to
their final pushover point.
Leslie also was under the impression that his might not be the only
Yorktown dive-bombers in the area. As far as he knew, Yorktown’s scouting
squadron (VS-5) had been launched shortly after his, and therefore ought to be
trailing his unit. He did not know that VS-5 was currently cooling its heels on
board Yorktown.62 Doctrine said that when two squadrons arrived at a target, the
lead squadron should take the further target, so that the trailing squadron could
hit the nearer target at roughly the same time. This reinforced Leslie’s belief that
he should attack S ry , which was slightly more distant. He even radioed VS-5
at 1015 to the effect that they should attack the target on the left (Hiry ), while
he attended to the target on the right (S ry ).63 Thus far, he had not seen more
than three carriers in the Japanese formation.64
At 1020 Leslie radioed Massey, asking if he was ready to begin his torpedo
attack. Massey responded affirmatively. However, just moments later Leslie
heard Massey frantically calling for fighter support as the CAP plowed into
him.65 It no longer made sense for Leslie to delay his own attack. By now, VB-3
had arrived in a favorable position to the northeast of the target. S ry , oblivious
to his approach, had turned briefly from running northwest and was coming
around to starboard to face them. She seemed to be preparing to launch more
fighters.66 On this angle, VB-3 would be able to attack upwind of the target,
which was preferred as it gave better control over the angle of dive.67 Even
better, as S ry began turning back to the east to launch, her turn brought her
length parallel to the attacking warplanes–an ideal situation.68 This also explains
how Hiry managed to avoid being dive-bombed herself. Though her position in
the middle of the formation had ultimately made her more attractive to VT-3’s
attack, it also neatly exempted her from the dive-bombing attacks. Swinging
down from the north, VB-3’s planes now found S ry directly in their path, with
Hiry a more distant option ahead of them (i.e., to the south). Leslie split his
aircraft into three divisions and began easing down into his final approach.

Meanwhile, still unnoticed by the Japanese, Enterprise’s two dive-bomber

squadrons were approaching Kid Butai from the southwest. They, too, wanted a
good attack position, preferably somewhat upwind, as well as one that would
allow them to dive with the sun at their backs. As a result, Enterprise’s SBDs
moved a good way northeast, and well into the heart of the Japanese formation,
before banking left and initiating their final short approach from out of the
southeast.
In doing so, the Americans first had to penetrate overtop the Japanese
destroyer screen. This they apparently did without eliciting much in the way of
warning from the ships scattered below–all eyes in the task force were glued to
VT-3’s attack. Kid Butai as a whole, and its air defense personnel in particular,
were suffering from what is known in modern military parlance as “target
fixation.” That is, they were focusing to the point of myopia on a single, though
admittedly very important piece of data, and were no longer keeping track of the
environment around them. This time, there would be no warning salvos from
Tone or Chikuma, no smokescreens laid down by the outlying destroyers to warn
of the enemy’s approach.
There’s no question that both the Americans and the Japanese were
hindered in this respect to a certain extent by the weather. The Americans had
been able to use the scattered clouds to their advantage. At the same time,
though, none of the American squadrons were able to get a sense for the larger
tactical picture. In fact, they couldn’t even see the complete extent of the
Japanese task force. Both the Enterprise and Yorktown pilots were in essence
fighting their own separate battles–they weren’t aware of each other until after
their attacks had been delivered.
The Japanese CAP pilots were in the same boat, only more so. The majority
of the Zeros were now at low altitude and were either attacking the American
TBDs or fighting with Thach. The view from a fighter cockpit at low altitude is
restricted in any case, and it was hardly surprising that they lost track of the
overall flow of the battle. However, one of the most prized attributes of any
fighter pilot is his ability to maintain both mental control and a conceptual grasp
of the larger combat occurring around him. This is commonly referred to as
“situational awareness”–a state of mental acuity and calmness under fire that is
the polar opposite of “target fixation.” Instead, the Japanese fighters were
concentrating on killing VT-3. In the noticeably understated words of S ry s
after-action report, “There is a marked tendency for our fighters to
overconcentrate on enemy torpedo planes.”69 This is perhaps understandable,
given that Imperial Japanese Navy doctrine viewed torpedo aircraft as the most
dangerous carrier-borne weapon. Yet, it seems clear that in this regard the
Japanese CAP, despite the undoubted experience of its pilots, suffered a
collective breakdown.
However, this tendency toward overpursuit applied doubly to the amount of
effort the Japanese expended on Thach’s section. Shooting down these American
interlopers–who admittedly had inflicted unprecedented casualties on the Zeros–
became a goal in and of itself. If Thach’s recollections are to be believed, his
three-plane formation was absorbing the attention of a third or more of the
Japanese CAP This reaction was totally out of proportion to the actual threat
posed by his Wildcats. A far more intelligent approach would have been to
detach a shotai to keep the Americans busy, while the remaining dozen or so
fighters went back down to attend to VT-3 or (better yet) climbed back up to top
cover positions.
However, the fact that the Japanese fighters were now at lower altitude has
also been somewhat misunderstood. Altitude, per se, was not the CAP’s real
problem at this time. After all, Zeros could climb at more than 4,000 feet per
minute. Given five minutes’ warning, they could have been back up to the likely
altitude of any dive-bomber attack. Rather, the fact that they were arrayed along
a northwest-southeast axis, with most of them concentrated in the southeast
quadrant, meant that it was doubly difficult to spot dive-bombers approaching
from distant, and orthogonal quarters.
Indeed, the Japanese CAP’s problem was not an inability to compensate
vertically, so much as its inability to react to the lateral distortions that were now
being thrust on it. It had simply been pulled in too many directions during the
past hour–northeast (VT-8), south-southwest (VT-6), and now southeast (VT-
3/VF-3). Not only that, but the combined attack by VT-3/VF-3 was in the
process of shooting down larger numbers of Japanese CAP fighters than any
previous enemy had ever managed. Given this, it is hardly surprising that Kid
Butai’s attention–pilots, lookouts, and hik ch s all–was glued along the
southeast axis.

Despite the utter lack of fighter opposition at high altitude, the American
dive-bombers did not have everything their own way. VB-3, for instance, was
going into its attack with only thirteen armed aircraft out of its nominal strength
of seventeen. Four of the SBDs, including Leslie’s, had suffered problems with
their new electrical bomb arming devices, leading them to accidentally jettison
their ordnance into the Pacific some minutes before.
In the case of VS-6 and VB-6, things became somewhat confused between
the two squadrons during the final moments. McClusky was presented with two
CVs as he approached, one (the closest) on his left, and the other, a bit farther,
on his right. These were Kaga and Akagi, respectively, with Kaga the
westernmost carrier, and Akagi off her starboard quarter.70 Doctrine dictated that
each squadron should attack one carrier, and McClusky radioed instructions to
that effect.71 However, as mentioned previously, doctrine also said that when
two squadrons attacked together, the leading squadron should take the further
target.
However, Wade McClusky, despite being an excellent group leader, was
also a former fighter pilot and had only recently transferred to dive-bombers.
Not surprisingly, he was not as studied in attack doctrine as were his
subordinates and consequently overlooked this guiding principle, with
spectacular results. Switching on his radio, he directed Lt. Gallaher (Scouting
Six’s commander) to hit the near carrier on the left-hand side (Kaga). At the
same time, he ordered Lt. Richard Best’s Bombing Six to take the more distant
right-hand carrier (Akagi). Satisfied that everything was now in order, McClusky
decided to add his three-plane command element to Gallaher’s strike. Opening
his dive flaps, he radioed to his wingman, “Earl, Follow me down!”72
Unfortunately, by dint of these orders, McClusky had unwittingly reversed
doctrine. He ought to have ordered Gallaher’s leading squadron to attack Akagi
instead. As McClusky prepared to push over, unbeknownst to him, Dick Best
and Bombing Six were moving into position a short distance below him,
planning to attack the same carrier!
As an experienced dive-bomber, Lieutenant Best never doubted for a
moment that doctrine would be followed in the matter of doling out attacks
between the two squadrons. As such, he continued leading his squadron toward
Kaga, specifically advising McClusky of that fact by radioing, “Group
Commander from Six Baker One. Am attacking according to doctrine.”73 It is
probable that both men transmitted to each other simultaneously, thereby
jamming the other’s transmission. Whatever the reason, neither McClusky nor
Best heard the other’s message. The net result of all this, though, was that Kaga
would shortly find herself on the receiving end of a jumbo-sized attack.
The Americans had now set themselves up to deliver a killing blow from
above, while the immediate battle still raged far below. By 1020 VT-3’s attack
was moving toward CarDiv 2 and was beginning to be savaged by the Japanese
CAP. However, Nagumo had ordered Akagi and Kaga to launch fighters as soon
as they were readied in order to stave off this obvious danger and to rotate in as
replacements for those CAP fighters that needed replenishment. On Akagi, a
group of Zeros under the command of PO1c Kimura Koreo were warming up on
the flight deck and preparing for takeoff. Kaga was preparing to do the same. As
it turned out, Kimura’s was to be the last aircraft Akagi ever launched. The stage
was now set for the single most decisive aerial attack in naval history.
12

A Fallacious Five Minutes–1020–1025

We pardon our readers for having turned the previous page with the
understandable expectation of finding Dauntlesses hurtling downward from the
heavens, only to discover that a brief but necessary piece of business remains
before we get to the “exciting part.” Before relating the particulars of the
American dive-bomber attack, a final, crucial question must be answered.
Namely, what exactly was occurring on the Japanese flight decks at this
moment? This is a matter that has been incorrectly reported for the past sixty
years, and it is vital to set the record straight. Please rest assured, however, that
the bombing will commence promptly thereafter.
The common wisdom on this matter, as reported by Fuchida and endlessly
parroted by every Western chronicler of Midway, is that at the moment of the
decisive attack at 1020–1025 the Japanese were on the brink of launching their
own massive counterstrike. The Japanese flight decks were supposedly packed
practically wingtip to wingtip with bombers and escort fighters waiting to take
off. Fuchida’s description of a “fateful five minutes” in his book Midway: The
Battle that Doomed Japan is worth quoting at length, as it sets the tenor for all
subsequent accounts:

Preparations for a counterstrike against the enemy had continued on

board our four carriers throughout the enemy torpedo attacks. One after
another, planes were hoisted from the hangar and quickly arranged on the
flight deck. There was no time to lose. At 1020 Admiral Nagumo gave the
order to launch when ready. On Akagi’s flight deck all planes were in
position with engines warming up. The big ship began turning into the
wind. Within five minutes all her planes would be launched.
Five minutes! Who would have dreamed that the tide of battle would
shift completely in that interval of time?
Visibility was good. Clouds were gathering at about 3,000 meters,
however, and though there were occasional breaks, they afforded good
concealment for approaching enemy planes. At 1024 the order to start
 launching came from the bridge by voice tube. The Air Officer flapped a
white flag, and the first Zero fighter gathered speed and whizzed off the
deck. At that instant a lookout screamed “Hell-divers!” I looked up to see
three black enemy planes plummeting towards our ship.1

This is good stuff–dramatic, chock full of suspense and fickle fate; in short,
tailor-made for a great screenplay. It is also utter nonsense, at least in one key
respect. In reality, when the Americans struck their fatal blow, the Japanese
counterstrike was nowhere near ready to be launched on any of their four
carriers.
The reason Fuchida’s account is nonsense is because of the laws of space
and time that had inexorably dictated Kid Butai’s operations this morning. As
we have seen, spotting a strike for launch was a complex process that typically
took a minimum of around forty-five minutes and often occupied upward of an
hour. During this time, the ship’s flight deck was closed to operations, because
aircraft were being spotted aft. Landings were completely impossible. And while
fighters could theoretically take off from the bow during spotting, in practice we
know of no instances where this was done. If Nagumo was indeed ready to
launch at 1020, then the Japanese carriers had to have spent at least the previous
three-quarters of an hour spotting their strike force. Yet, a simple perusal of
Akagi’s flight operations for the late morning reveals the truth:

0837–0900–recover Midway attack force
0910–recover combat air patrol (CAP)
0932–launch CAP
0951–recover CAP
1006–launch CAP
1010–recover CAP2

In other words, from roughly 0837 onward, Akagi was conducting some
sort of takeoff or landing operations (most of them associated with CAP fighters)
every twenty minutes or so. Indeed, she had recovered three CAP fighters as late
as 1010, a mere fifteen minutes before she was fatally bombed.
The 1010 recovery–that of PO1c Tanaka Katsumi, PO2c Ohara Hiroshi,
and PO1c Iwashiro Yoshio–demolishes Fuchida’s account at a stroke. There was
no slightest possibility that Akagi could have gotten her strike planes on deck,
spotted, and warmed up in the fifteen minutes after these Zeros had landed.
Nagumo needed forty-five minutes, not fifteen. Under such conditions, with the
carriers under near–constant attack, it is understandable that Akagi’s hik ch had
not completed the process by 1025. In fact, spotting probably had not even
begun. The situation was much the same aboard the other carriers. Each of them
had launched aircraft since 1000, with Kaga and S ry having sent up fighters at
1000, Hiry at 1013, S ry yet again at 1015, and Akagi latest of all at 1025.
Another crucial piece of evidence in this matter is Hiry ’s behavior. If
Fuchida’s account is to be believed, Hiry , which was to escape the coming
attacks, by all rights ought to have been launching her own strike aircraft at the
very time her compatriots were being bombed. Yet, as we know, she was under
attack by VT-3 throughout this time, and in any event, would not mount her own
counterstrike until around 1050. This, in turn, means that she was no closer to
being ready to go at 1020 than anybody else was. The conclusion is inescapable–
the American attack found the Japanese in roughly the same position they had
been in all morning, that is, looking for an opening in which to begin spotting
the flight decks. The relentless, if hapless, American attacks had essentially
paralyzed Nagumo since roughly 0700. Fuchida’s “fateful five minutes” was
nothing more than a fairy tale meant to hide this essential truth. Five minutes
either way wasn’t going to spare the Japanese. Like blood from a wounded
patient, time–the lifeblood of decision and action–had been oozing out of Kid
Butai all morning, slowly and inexorably. Now the patient was beyond recovery.
None of this is meant to imply that the coming attack was not decisive as
far as the battle was concerned–it most certainly was. Nor should it be assumed
that there were no aircraft whatsoever on the Japanese flight decks at 1020–there
most certainly were. But these aircraft were mostly, if not entirely, Zeros waiting
to be launched to relieve the CAP patrols that were already in the air. This view
is supported by both American eyewitness accounts and Japanese sources. The
official Japanese war history series (Senshi S sho) explicitly states that at the
time of the attack, all four Japanese carriers still had their attack aircraft in the
hangars. The only aircraft on deck were either CAP fighters or, in the case of S
ry , strike force escort fighters that were being launched to augment the CAP.3
This viewpoint, of course, stands in apparent conflict with certain
eyewitness accounts made by American pilots, which often painted lurid
portraits of bombs exploding among packed enemy squadrons, and Japanese
planes being catapulted around the flight decks or enveloped in sheets of flame.
While such accounts must be given due consideration, they must also be
weighed against the authoritative written evidence that is available. Certainly
these American pilot accounts contain elements of truth. The American bombing
attack did cause spectacular fireworks, and Japanese aircraft were undoubtedly
destroyed in the process. But cooler, more senior heads among the American
pilots also observed a lack of planes on the Japanese flight decks. Lt. Dick Best
commented that he saw very few Japanese aircraft topside during his attack run
against Akagi.4 Lt. Cdr. Maxwell Leslie, commander of Yorktown’s dive-bomber
squadron, also noted in a draft of his official report that he did not see any planes
whatsoever on S ry ’s deck,5 although the pilot just behind him, Lt. Paul
Holmberg, thought he saw a Zero being hurled over the side.6 Aboard Kaga, the
situation was much the same, with torpedo bomber pilot Morinaga remarking
that Kaga had only two or three aircraft on deck near the stern when the attack
developed.7
These sober observations, in conjunction with the cold, hard data recorded
in the individual Japanese carrier action reports, must be given precedence over
the fragmentary and often conflicting reports of American pilots. Like aviators
everywhere, they were prone to seeing what they wanted to see.8 If they
embellished the appearance of the stunning damage they inflicted on the
Japanese, they are to be forgiven. Dive-bombing a moving target is difficult
under the best of circumstances. When these stresses were compounded by
antiaircraft fire, explosions, and violent aerial maneuvers, it is hardly surprising
that the aviator accounts tended to focus on the more visible elements of their
attacks. Indeed, in many cases they were simply looking for a hit, any hit, that
occurred at about the time that their own bomb should have hit the target–a
method that was reliable for the lead plane in a formation but decidedly less so
for the ones following him down. None of this, however, detracted from the
overall impressiveness, or the sheer horror, of the calamity they were about to
unleash on their enemies.
13

The Iron Fist–1020–1030

At 1019 an inkling of what was coming was finally revealed to the Japanese.
Hiry ’s senior lookout, a sailor named Yoshida, shouted that he sighted dive-
bombers to port approaching Kaga from high overhead, altitude some 4,000
meters.1 “How is Kaga firing?” demanded Yamaguchi. “Are her arrows raised?”
meaning the status of her five-inch battery. “Low-angle!” came the reply.
Yamaguchi immediately ordered a warning flashed to Kaga–“Enemy dive-
bombers over your ship!” To his relief, Kaga shortly confirmed that she had
received it. As they watched through their binoculars, Kaga’s guns began
cranking skyward and “opened up all together” on the enemy planes. But it was
too late.
At the same moment, one of Kaga’s officers, Lt. Cdr. Mitoya Sesu, was
standing just outside the island, watching the preparations for the next CAP
launch. Nearby was WO Morinaga Takayoshi, standing with a group of pilots in
the center of the flight deck, including Maeda Takeshi, just aft of the amidships
elevator. WO Yoshino Haruo, the commander of the morning’s reconnaissance
flight, had just come up from the ready room and was loitering in the antiaircraft
galleries at the rear of the ship. They were all slated to go on the coming strike,
and while they waited for their planes to be spotted, they had orders from the
bridge to stand by as extra lookouts. Now they were scanning the sky. No one
can say who spotted the attackers first–the sharp-eyed pilots or the lookouts in
the air defense command post atop the island. But suddenly, at around 1022,
everyone started yelling to the bridge “enemy dive-bombers!” Both Yoshino and
Maeda couldn’t help but admire the Americans’ technique. No glide-bombing
attacks here. They were coming in like the pros did, at ridiculously steep angles.2
Kaga most likely had already been turning to port to begin a brief run into
the wind to launch fighters.3 The Dauntlesses were attacking from her port
quarter, and Captain Okada immediately ordered a radical turn to starboard,
looping back northward.4 Against Lofton Henderson’s green pilots, such a
maneuver might have worked. Against pilots of this caliber, though, there was
little that Okada could do. “Nimble” did not well describe Kaga in any case–her
42,000 tons turned about as gracefully as a draft horse before the plow.
Lumbering into her circle at something around twenty-four knots, she labored to
increase her speed. Worse, to her lookouts it was apparent that she was being
attacked by a swarm of aircraft, many of which hadn’t even started their dives
yet.5 Once Kaga committed to her turn, it would be easier for the trailing aircraft
to hit her.

13-1: Decisive attacks against Kido Butai. Dive-bombers mortally wound three
of the Japanese carriers, while VT-3 attacks Hiry .

The one thing Kaga still had going for her was her relatively large AA
outfit. Her five-inch battery, sixteen barrels in all, trained skyward and began
firing as rapidly as possible. Despite her antiquated fire-control system, the
gunners did what they knew how to do best, throwing up a barrage of five-inch
shells. The 25-mm automatics joined in as well, though they couldn’t expect to
hit much until the dive-bombers had already gotten low enough to release. This
much credit must be given, though–Kaga was the only Japanese carrier that
bagged a dive-bomber this day. She hit the sixth plane in line, that of Ens. J. Q.
Roberts, and sent it slamming into the water close at hand. However, new
attackers came charging down in rapid succession.
For a moment, Kaga’s evasive turn paid results. The first three planes
missed, water columns from their 500-lb and smaller 100-lb bombs sprouting all
around the big ship. Standing on the air-control station on the aft end of the
island, Kaga’s hik ch , Commander Amagai, watched as the bombs detached
from the attacking aircraft and came floating down. You could actually see the
damned things! They grew larger the closer they came, picking up speed all the
while. Below and ahead of Amagai, Commander Mitoya beheld the same
spectacle, and to him it seemed as if he could actually discern the individual
coloring of the bombs. They seemed to be coming straight at him. In fact, he was
pretty much correct in his assessment. While Amagai apparently remained
standing, entranced by the scene, Mitoya had the good sense to hit the deck and
cover his face. Further aft, Morinaga and his companions did likewise, as it was
clear what was coming. For, despite Okada’s valiant attempts, the end results
were as inexorable as gravity–Kaga was simply crushed under an avalanche of
explosives.
The fourth American plane to dive, that of Lieutenant Gallaher, was the
first to draw blood, planting its 500-lb bomb on the flight deck aft, near the
elevator. This bomb crashed into the crew spaces adjacent to the upper hangar
deck and detonated, setting the berthing compartments afire. It also landed very
near Morinaga and his companions, mowing down all but three of them
(Yoshino Haruo being one of those spared), and probably doing the same to the
gun crews in the starboard 25-mm AA galleries. Morinaga felt the searing heat
on his upturned arm, but he dared not get up and run, for he could hear other
bombs still coming down. From his perch on the air platform, Amagai saw the
initial bomb disintegrate the ship’s maintenance officer, Commander Yamazaki
Torao, as he ran toward the island.6
Depending on where he was standing on the bridge, Captain Okada may not
have even seen the first hit. He was still directing evasive maneuvers, and the
Type 91 director tower behind the bridge blocked his view aft in any case. The
next two planes missed, but then all hell broke loose. The seventh plane planted
its bomb almost directly on the forward elevator, smashing it down into its well
and then detonating in the fighter stowage spaces.7 The frightful concussion
blew out all the bridge windows. The helmsman remained at his post, as did
Okada. But smoke and debris obscured all visibility from the bridge, and the
helmsman could not control the carrier. Yelling into the voice tube, Okada
quickly ordered that emergency steering be conducted from the engine spaces.
 Rushing up to the bridge past Amagai, Mitoya found Okada looking
somewhat stunned. Given that the ship was now unnavigable from the bridge,
shouldn’t the captain move below, he asked? But Okada replied vaguely that he
would stay where he was, and Mitoya was told to check the damage aft and
report back.8 Perhaps Okada could get no response from the engineers below
regarding taking over steering, and he wanted to alert them as to his desire to
shift control of the ship.9 Whatever the particulars, Mitoya was apparently
dispatched on the errand. It was lucky for him that he was, because this would be
Okada Jisaku’s last order. Almost immediately thereafter, it seems clear that a
bomb landed in front of, or more likely squarely on top of, Kaga’s command
center.
Kaga’s island, the first ever installed on a large Japanese carrier, had
established the pattern for Japanese flattops. It was a diminutive affair. The air
control post where Commander Amagai was stationed was a tiny platform
located on the aft part of the structure. Situated a level above the flight deck, this
post was overshadowed by the circular tower of the Type 91 director. From the
air-control station, the bridge was entered by mounting a stairway that curved up
around the right side of the director from the starboard rear. The bridge itself,
perched some fifteen feet above the flight deck, was only about eleven feet on
each side. It had windows on three sides, with open exits leading aft. Cramped
and uncomfortable in any sort of bad weather, it more closely resembled a three-
season porch than the nerve center of a 42,000-ton warship. It was utterly
unprotected. The effects of a 500-lb bomb exploding anywhere in the vicinity
can readily be imagined.
Across the water on Akagi, civilian cameraman Makishima Teiuchi had
watched as Kaga had gone into her evasive turn. A few seconds later, large
columns of water began erupting around her. He had been thinking that she
might escape her tormentors, but then he witnessed orange flames suddenly
blossoming around Kaga’s bridge. He groaned to himself, “She is beaten at
last.”10 According to some reports, the bomb struck a fuel bowser parked
directly in front of the island, causing it to explode and drenching the bridge in
burning gasoline.11 However, it is far more likely that a bomb hit the bridge
itself. Indeed, the fuel cart may be entirely apocryphal–at least one Kaga aviator
says that such devices were not even used,12 and that he personally witnessed a
bomb hitting the bridge.13 Japan’s official war history also specifically endorses
the idea of a direct hit in this area.14 Whatever the cause, the result was
unarguable–Kaga’s command center was destroyed, the front half of the island
shredded down to the bare steel skeleton and left blazing, and the ship’s senior
officers wiped out.15 In fact, Kaga suffered more high-ranking officers killed
than the other three carriers combined, and this early hit on the island was likely
the reason for it.16 Captain Okada Jisaku certainly died on the spot, and most
likely his executive officer, Captain Kawaguchi Masao as well. With them went
the ship’s chief gunnery officer (Lt. Cdr. Miyano Toyosaburo), navigator (Cdr.
Monden Ichiji), and communications officer (Lt. Cdr. Takahashi Hidekazu).17
Commander Amagai’s position at the rear of Kaga’s island, shielded behind
the bulk of the director, seems to explain his survival. Even so, he received
wounds from the flying debris. Amagai shouted into the voice tube to the bridge
but received no reply. Whether he made his way up to the bridge and discovered
the scene of carnage, or simply put two and two together is unknown, but
Amagai clearly realized that the command spaces were finished. He could see
the flames licking the front of the structure.
In the interim, another bomb smacked home square amidships and a bit to
port. Indeed, by now the situation was growing so confused that it was
impossible to observe how many hits were occurring. The American planes were
still coming down, perhaps more raggedly by this time, but still intent on taking
pot shots at the now blazing carrier.18 Kaga continued blundering around in a
clockwise circle, beaten and blind, her dazed men waiting for the aerial
pummeling to stop.
Maeda Takeshi had run off the flight deck almost as soon as the bombs
began falling. The first hit had left him intact, along with Morinaga and Yoshino.
He had what he thought was the good sense to duck below to the boat deck as
the bombs kept coming down. Once there, he was sure, he would be under better
cover. Unfortunately for him, one of the bombs plummeted into the ocean near
at hand, just off the fantail to port.19 The resulting explosion sent spray and
bomb splinters blasting out across the boat deck. Maeda felt a searing heat in his
leg and went down in a heap.
To the north, on Hiry ’s bridge, there were collective moans as Kaga burst
into flames and began smoking heavily. Hiry had tried to warn her, but it had
all been for nothing. Her navigator, Commander Cho, later remarked, “It was
like a horrible dream in slow motion; to see such a great carrier done in this
easily.” Almost immediately, though, the lookout started screaming in a loud
voice that S ry and Akagi were under attack as well. Afraid that the man’s
near-hysterical demeanor would be bad for morale, Cho snapped at him to quiet
down and use a lower voice. He could see, though, that the man was right. Cho
tried to stay focused on driving Hiry out of danger, as the torpedo plane attack
was still coming in. But it was useless–everyone on the bridge was stunned into
insensibility by the magnitude of the attack.20

At the time Kaga was attacked, S ry was still heading northwest. At 1024,
though, she began a starboard turn to launch fighters.21 Commmander Kanao
Ryoichi, her gunnery officer, stood atop the carrier’s island at the antiaircraft
action station. He and his men were keeping an attentive lookout, especially
toward the south, where VT-3’s attack was unfolding. The sky was clouded with
occasional patches of clear blue. Kanao could see no friendly CAP fighters; they
had all been pulled away in other directions. Given that his ship was now, in
effect, leading the carrier force, it was an uncomfortable feeling. In fact, there
was something eerie in how calm the sky and sea looked.22
Below, on the bridge, S ry ’s executive officer, Ohara Hisashi, was
watching the attack on Kaga unfold when the lookouts suddenly screamed from
above “Enemy dive-bombers-hole in the clouds.”23 A lone aircraft broke into the
sunlight. It was at an elevation of forty degrees, and was heading right to left to
intercept S ry . A second plane quickly appeared 500 meters behind the first,
which had already closed to within about 5,000 meters. On the air defense
platform, Kanao shouted “Aim at the planes!” Quickly, the director and forward
guns spun to face the attacker, as the director crew frantically tried to generate a
solution.
Kanao yelled, “Commence firing!” even though the gun director was far
from ready. But as he did so, he noticed that the starboard guns were about to
reach their dead angles forward.24 Grabbing the voice tube, he yelled down to
the helmsman, “Give me left full rudder immediately!” Befitting her reputation
as a responsive handler, S ry quickly began turning back to port to unmask her
starboard batteries. The American dive-bombers–three or four of them–
continued to close, still flying level. They were now at a 50-degree angle from
the bow, approximately 4,000 meters away and turning toward the carrier. S ry
’s 25-mm mounts were quicker to respond than her forward five-inch battery and
began blazing away at the attackers. With their wings flashing in the sunlight,
one after another, the American Dauntlesses finally pushed over into perfect
dives.
What Kanao apparently didn’t see was the other two elements of American
aircraft, which were also attacking S ry from the port bow and astern. In other
words, S ry apparently suffered a serious breakdown of her fire-control
processes. Kanao was the gunnery officer–if he or the lookouts near him didn’t
see these planes, then the guns under his command as gunnery officer couldn’t
very well defend the ship against them, either. It is possible that S ry ’s Type 94
director tower masked his view aft, or simply that the sky arcs for the two 12-cm
spotting glasses facing aft (which were located a deck lower) were lousy. The
net result, though, appears to have been that S ry continued to charge around in
a left-hand circle, unaware that several more aircraft were attacking from
different angles.
Kanao, however, was focused on the problem at hand. He was infuriated
that the five-inch mounts had still not opened up on the American aircraft, and
the 25-mm guns didn’t seem to be hitting, either.25 Angrily, he watched as the
lead American plane began pulling out of its dive. And then he saw the bomb.
Kanao ducked instinctively, looking for some sort of safety, but there was
precious little to hide behind on the top of S ry ’s tiny island.
The impact blew S ry ’s exec across the bridge. Commander Ohara didn’t
find the sensation particularly painful–it felt more like a steambath than anything
else. Yet, as soon as he tried to regain his footing, the other men on the bridge
immediately began applying towels to his face. He realized that he must have
been burned more badly than he had supposed.26 Still, Ohara was lucky, because
the bridge structure had at least protected the command staff somewhat–unlike
their opposite numbers on board Kaga, they were all still alive. This could only
have been the result of the distance from the impact point of the bomb, because S
ry ’s island was a near twin of Kaga’s.
In his exposed position, Commander Kanao’s first sensation of the hit came
from his hands, which felt like they had been skinned.27 The nape of his neck
stung as if an ice pick had been rammed into it. He realized that he had been
flashburned. Luckily, Kanao’s steel helmet had provided him with some measure
of protection. His eyes were still shut, and when he tried opening them,
something blazing red was floating hazily just in front of him. He closed them
again. The burning sensation passed. Pulling himself off the glass-strewn deck
and standing up, he discovered that he was alone. The other lookouts, the
director crew, the communications talker–all of them were either dead at their
posts or missing, blown overboard by the explosion. He vaguely remembered
hearing moans. Had they been the last thin cries of his comrades as they died?
The AA director at the rear of the bridge was crushed down against the deck.
Kanao realized that it was only by sheer luck that he had survived.
Several decks almost directly below, Petty Officer Mori Juzo was lounging
in the pilot’s ready room, which was located on the AA battery deck, a level
below the island and on the starboard side. Mori was still waiting to be debriefed
from the morning’s mission and was passing the time eating rice balls.28
Suddenly, the battle bugle had blown over the intercom, followed by a message
that Kaga was under attack. Some of the other pilots ran out of the ready room
up to the flight deck, but Mori stayed. He and about a dozen other men
continued their conversation. Without warning, there came an enormous
explosion, and the ship lurched to starboard. The first bomb landed very near the
No. 1 AA gun (located at the starboard bow, forward of the island)29 and
demolished everything around it. The ready room lay not forty feet from the
impact point–the forward bulkhead simply disintegrated, and flames poured into
the compartment. Mori and his companions turned and ran for it, making their
way aft toward what they hoped was safety.
Back atop the island, Commander Kanao marveled that he was still intact.
As he looked down from his vantage, he saw that the rest of the ship was in
pretty bad shape. A second bomb had landed in the middle of the flight deck and
penetrated deeply into the lower hangar. Smoke was already pouring from the
opening.30 Just then, the third and last bomb landed on the flight deck aft with a
flash like magnesium. Kanao flinched; the pain in his eyes was beyond
imagination. Temporarily blinded, he thought he was going to die.
Below in S ry ’s port engine room, Engineering First-Class Special
Service Lieutenant Naganuma Michitaro felt and heard the tremendous initial
explosion even above the roar of the ship’s equipment. The whole ship trembled,
and the vibrations caused a deep resonance in his body. Another explosion
followed, and then a third. The engineers shouted out to each other. What had
happened?
At that moment, S ry ’s turbines went dead so abruptly that the men
simply stared at the engines uncomprehendingly.31 It was as if the ship had been
stabbed through the heart. From further forward, someone yelled, “The boiler
room was hit!”Another asked, “Was it a torpedo?” It was not an unreasonable
question, given the ferocious nature of the initial explosions. In fact, the deep-
penetrating second bomb had ruptured the steam pipes in the boiler spaces,
scalding nearly all the crewmen there to death.32 Topside, a huge cloud of white
smoke was jetting from S ry ’s midships.33 Glancing down at his watch,
Naganuma noticed it was 1030 right on the dot. He looked grimly around at his
comrades. What would happen to them now?
Topside, the light in Commander Kanao’s eyes slowly abated. He saw the
entire flight deck from the island on back enveloped in a sheet of smoke. The
fighters on deck were in pieces and burning. The explosions had also killed
many sailors, including deck handlers and gun crews. Their bodies were strewn
about in little white and tan piles. Kanao stood there, petrified, and wondered if
he was the sole survivor in the sea of fire now engulfing S ry .
If the difference between victory and defeat was narrow at Midway, then
nowhere was fate more poised on a razor’s edge than the attack on Akagi. Unlike
S ry and Kaga, which were both assaulted by a dozen or more bombers, Akagi
was attacked by a grand total of three, and then only because of the quick
thinking of Lt. Richard Best. Best had been about to dive Kaga with his entire
squadron, but at the exact moment of pushover, he had witnessed McClusky’s
squadron heading in as well. Best managed to pull out of his dive, but almost the
entirety of his squadron went with McClusky. Best, with Lt.(jg) Edwin J.
Kroeger and Ens. Frederick T. Weber hanging off either wing, had maintained
altitude and watched the outcome of the attack. Seeing that Kaga had obviously
been smashed, Best decided to attack the other large carrier near at hand with his
element. Such a meager force hardly constituted the sort of attack that would
normally have been deemed necessary to destroy the flagship of Kid Butai. But
Best was determined to attack with what he had.
Best’s group didn’t have time to do things “by the book.” Forming up for a
sequential attack was standard doctrine, but instead Best’s element attacked in
the “V” formation they were already in.34 He headed north briefly, then reefed
his men into a right-hand turn to dive on the target. Best was in the center, his
wingmen perhaps 75-100 feet on either side. The Japanese also noted that the
Americans didn’t appear to dive as steeply as Kaga’s assailants had.35 It may
well be that Best had lost some altitude during his abortive dive on that ship. As
they swooped down, approaching Akagi from her port side, Best aimed for what
he thought was Akagi’s island, but was actually her large, protruding stack on
the starboard side. One of his wingmen aimed at the aircraft spotted on deck, the
other chose the large, red hinomaru painted on Akagi’s flight deck near the bow.
Best’s men must have held their formation all the way down, for their bombs
landed in the same rough “V” formation.
Incredible as it may seem, having just observed the attack on Kaga, Akagi
was seemingly caught nearly unprepared by Best’s sudden onset. It may be that
Nagumo and his staff had judged that they were in the clear, at least for the
moment. Kaga’s assailants were attacking roughly east to west, and away from
them. But VT-3’s attack was still developing to the northeast, and Akagi didn’t
want to get entangled with them, either. Thus, no one on board the flagship
appears to have noticed Best until his trio was nearly atop Akagi. On the flight
deck, PO1c Kimura had just been given the launch signal, and his Zero was
heading down the deck and into the air. Suddenly, shouts rang out–enemy dive-
bombers overhead! On the island, Commander Fuchida threw himself behind a
bulkhead covered with a protective cloth mantelet.36
 Like both Kaga and S ry , Akagi’s fate was in her own hands as far as AA
fire was concerned. The only weapons that could be brought to bear in her
defense were her own, and perhaps the tiny automatic battery of her plane guard
destroyer, Nowaki. Akagi’s 25-mm guns began spitting out tracers at the three
attackers. There was precious little opportunity to bring the portside trio of 4.7-
inch mounts into action–there was no time to generate a good fire control
solution.

13-2: The attack against Akagi. This figure shows the probable course track of
Akagi from 0959 to when she was attacked at 1026 by Lt. Richard Best’s three-
plane element.

Like all Japanese captains, Aoki relied on the helm to save his ship. As
Captain Okada had recently discovered, though, evading thirty-knot torpedoes
was one thing–avoiding 250-knot dive-bombers piloted by professionals was
quite another. Aoki put his ship into a maximum starboard turn, presenting his
beam to the Americans–the most favorable attitude he could achieve under the
circumstances. Akagi described a huge right-hand circle, heading first north and
then back around to the east.
Nagumo’s flagship very nearly escaped, and by all rights should have
gotten away scot-free. If the element of surprise had been slightly less complete,
her AA fire (or that of Nowaki) a little more effective, her maneuvers a little
more violent, or the aim of her attackers a little less precise, Akagi might well
have dodged the trio of bombs aimed at her, with incalculable consequences for
the outcome of the battle. Had she emerged unscathed from this attack, her air
group would have been added to Hiry ’s forthcoming strike, with potentially
dire results for the Americans. Yet against all odds, Akagi received her mortal
wound.
Most accounts credit the Americans with two hits and a near miss on the
flagship, but on closer examination, this tally must be revised downward to a
single direct hit. Almost all sources agree that the first of the three bombs
slammed into the water about five to ten meters to port, and forward of the island
(which on Akagi was on the port side of the vessel).37 The resulting geyser
towered high over the bridge (itself some eighty feet above the waterline),
carrying away the radio antennae atop the island, and drenching everyone on the
bridge with a flood of dirty seawater. Within the surreal forms of the deluge,
Commander Sasabe thought he saw the apparition of his mother’s face.38
The third bomb is widely credited with hitting the aft portion of the flight
deck, but, in fact, it did not quite do so.39 Civilian newsreel cameraman
Makishima, who was on Akagi’s flight deck filming the attack on Kaga and the
flagship, states explicitly that, while personnel located on her bridge might have
deemed it a hit, in fact the bomb almost grazed the edge of the flight deck and
plunged into the water alongside the stern.40 The resulting geyser bent the edge
of the flight deck upward, thus creating the illusion of a hit.
Numerous secondary sources describe huge fires breaking out as a result of
the aft “hit,” but this actually was very unlikely for several reasons. First, there
were no planes currently in this area. Akagi had only CAP fighters on her deck at
the time of the attack. While Dick Best noted during his dive that Akagi’s Zeros
were taking off from fairly far aft,41 they still would not have been spotted
anywhere near the aft edge of the flight deck where the bomb came down. This
is because the portion of Akagi’s flight deck in the vicinity of the “hit” was
literally rounded down (to make landing easier) and wasn’t used for spotting
because of its relatively steep incline.
Even if a bomb had hit the flight deck in this area, it had absolutely no
chance of carrying into the hangar deck and starting a fire there either, because
in this portion of the ship there wasn’t any hangar deck. The rearmost 125 feet of
Akagi’s flight deck, from the aft edge of the rear elevator all the way to the stern,
was held up by four enormous steel supports. Underneath the wooden flight deck
itself there was nothing but steel girders, an overhead crane, and air space. Even
if a bomb hit the flight deck squarely here, the deck would have initiated its fuse
and the bomb would have detonated in midair above the boat deck and fantail.
None of the primary Japanese sources mention any such thing. Furthermore, a
bomb could not have carried down through the sixty-odd feet of air space,
through the boat deck, and then through Akagi’s main armored deck to detonate
in her engine and steering spaces–the fuse would have exploded the bomb long
before. Indeed, the general-purpose high-explosive bombs used by the
Americans in the attack, with their relatively light cases, would not have
penetrated Akagi’s armored deck under any circumstances. In a nutshell, then,
with no planes on the flight deck in the area, and no hangar deck below, there
could not have been any fires of significance as a result of this hit. The Nagumo
Report directly supports this view, describing the damage aft as not being fatal
and further elaborates “damage: several holes to after deck, 1 emergency
personnel killed.”42 This is hardly the sort of description one associates with the
veritable holocaust on the flight deck often attributed to the hit aft. Nor does it
match the very heavy and well-documented casualties suffered on S ry and
Kaga’s hangar decks as the result of such blows.43
Thus, the first and third bombs were misses, with the third landing very
close aboard indeed. It was the second bomb, landing at the aft edge of the
middle elevator, which doomed Akagi. This weapon was almost unquestionably
aimed by Best himself. He was a noted dive-bomber pilot and had a reputation
for both boldness and consummate skill. In the words of his backseater, Aviation
Chief Radioman James F. Murray, “Nobody pushed his dive steeper or held it
longer than Dick.”44 Given the “V” formation Best’s element dived in, it is
almost inconceivable that the trajectories of the bombs could have crossed in
midair. Furthermore, from what we know about how the bombs landed in
relation to the ship and each other, that is, in a rough “V” pattern themselves, it
is likewise almost a certainty that the center plane in the “V” dropped the bomb
that hit dead center on Akagi. That plane was piloted by Lieutenant Best.
His 1,000-lb payload sliced through the flight deck and exploded in the
upper hangar in the midst of the kank parked there. To Commander Sasabe,
Akagi’s navigator, the hit felt deceptively gentle. Fuchida, who was also near the
bridge, remembered the bomb landing with a crash and a blinding flash. A blast
of warm air washed over him. Yet the explosion was apparently also powerful
enough to hurl aircraft over the side of the flight deck.45

Finally, just after 1035, VT-3’s torpedo aircraft reached a position where they
could begin a series of runs against Yamaguchi’s flagship that would last until
1040.46 Thus, VT-3’s attack, although it was initiated well before the American
dive-bomber attack, did not actually reach its conclusion until slightly after the
dive-bombers had struck their respective targets. Hiry , far from being immune
by virtue of geographic distance, was now suddenly in the thick of things.
As before, Lt. Nagayasu’s batteries began blazing away with everything
they had, sending streams of tracers zipping out to greet the incoming American
aircraft.47 Only five American aircraft were left to make drops on Hiry , doing
so from between 600 and 800 yards out.48 Not surprisingly, though, the TBD’s
drop angles were lousy. One of the fish, as the result of a faulty release
mechanism, simply cartwheeled into the ocean, while another broached and ran
along the surface like a small speedboat.49 Hiry apparently had no problem
evading any of them. As they dropped, several of the American torpedo planes
flashed by Hiry ’s bow, where they were taken under heavy AA and CAP fire
again. Several were splashed shortly thereafter. In all, Zeros and perhaps
antiaircraft fire ultimately accounted for ten of Massey’s twelve aircraft.
Whether Hiry ’s AA contributed to the final demise of some of VT-3’s
remnants is unknown. However, it contributed to the demise of one Zero at
least–that of Lieutenant Fujita. Hit by friendly fire while pursuing the Americans
into the heart of the formation, his Zero had quickly caught fire. From Hiry ’s
bridge, Lieutenant Nagayasu saw Fujita’s plane hit and careen toward the water.
Nagayasu was sure that the pilot had been killed. Fujita, however, was
extraordinarily lucky. He was already at very low altitude–200 meters–but he
climbed out of the cockpit and popped his chute, which fortuitously opened just
before he hit the water.50
And then, just as quickly as they had come, the Americans were gone,
roaring off toward the east, hugging the waves to escape retribution from both
guns and fighters. The CAP fighters, many of whom had been engaged with VT-
3 and who were now chasing the attackers away from the fleet, could only catch
peripheral glimpses of the horror unfolding behind them. And under mounting
pillars of smoke, the bewildered crews of three great ships turned to face the
implacable foe that all sailors dread–fire.
14

Fire and Death–1030–1100

WW II–era warships were marvelously flammable. Anyone who has been on

board a ship of that vintage will have noticed that one of the prevalent odors
present is that of petroleum distillates, in the form of lubricants, solvents,
gasoline, and thousands of tons of fuel oil. Added to this, of course, was
ammunition for the ship’s guns, which was stored primarily in the magazines,
but smaller quantities of which were kept in ready storage lockers near the guns
for quick access during an attack. In contrast to today’s warships, oil-based
paints were used extensively. Wiring ways were filled with insulation that could
ignite at high temperature, as could piping insulation (which in Japanese
warships was often made of wood). Damage-control lockers themselves
contained wood beams for shoring, and additional shoring material was usually
stowed in the overheads of companionways and anywhere else sufficient space
could be found.
Warships were (and still are) full of paper–reports, forms, charts, manuals,
and blueprints. Belowdecks, there was cotton bedding for the crew (which
numbered between 1,100 and 1,700 men for each of the four carriers), as well as
their clothing and personal effects. For the comfort of the men, Japanese
berthing spaces often had false wooden flooring over the steel decks, with floor
mats and wooden messing tables stored underneath. The galleys contained
cooking oil, grains, and combustible foodstuffs. Grease deposits could be found
in the stoves and ventilator ducts leading from these spaces. The sick bay stored
ether and other volatile liquids. The ship’s laundry contained uniforms and rags,
as well as lint deposits in the dryers and ventilators. All Japanese shipboard
furniture was wooden, including chairs, tables, workbenches and so on.1
Wooden furniture made perfect sense for a country that had to import practically
all its iron ore, and hence reserved steel for truly essential items. The net result is
that warships of the day burned easily and well.
Aircraft carriers compounded these basic problems with specialized ones of
their own. For one thing, their flight decks alone represented anywhere from 50
to 125 tons of combustible wood.2 Far and away the worst fire hazard for
carriers, though, was their aircraft fueling system. Carriers typically could refuel
aircraft on both the hangar decks and the flight deck. A typical Japanese carrier
had a dozen fueling points for both high-octane and normal-octane aviation
gasoline on the flight deck, ten more on the upper hangar deck, and eight on the
lower hangar deck.3 A series of vertical fuel mains cross-connected the forward
and aft aviation gasoline tanks to horizontal petrol lines (one apiece level for
high-and normal-octane fuels) that ran around the circumference of each hangar
deck.4 Vertical risers fed the fueling stations located in the tubs along the edge of
the flight deck. Thus, each carrier was crisscrossed by a web of fuel lines, each
of which was filled during flight operations with highly flammable liquids.
Furthermore, the nature of the cross-connections in the system made it likely that
problems in one area of the ship would be carried to unaffected areas via the fuel
lines themselves, and potentially all the way to the main avgas storage tanks.
The storage tanks were isolated from the ship’s other spaces by cofferdam
compartments filled with CO2 gas, so as to insulate them from sparks and other
hazards. However, the tanks and cofferdams on Japanese carriers were notable
for being integrated into the actual structure of the ship. This meant that shock
stresses applied to the outside of the hull were directly communicated inward to
the avgas tanks, making them particularly vulnerable to cracking and leaking as
a result of combat damage. In later years, the Japanese would fill these voids
with concrete to try and minimize this hazard, but at the time of Midway, these
structural deficiencies were evidently not appreciated.5
The second major complication with carrier design and operation was that
of moving and stowing aircraft ordnance. Unlike a battleship or cruiser, whose
ammunition-handling arrangements were flash tight and protected behind the
heavy armor of the barbette and turret, carriers (particularly Japanese ones) were
not provided with anywhere near the same degree of protection. Yet, the
weapons being trundled about were in some senses more lethal than a battleship
shell. General-purpose and semi armor-piercing bombs contain a much higher
relative percentage of explosive than an armor-piercing shell, most of whose
weight is comprised by the heavy metal casing necessary to pierce armor. A GP
bomb can be nearly 50 percent explosive by weight. Against a lightly armored
target, bombs cause much more damage proportionately than a shell.
Unfortunately, this is equally true of the interior of one’s own carrier, should
such a bomb detonate there. As a result, carriers must take every possible
precaution to prevent such events from occurring.
Japanese carriers typically stowed their aircraft ordnance in two bomb
rooms fore and aft, as well as a torpedo magazine located adjacent to one of the
bomb rooms (the location varied from ship to ship). Armor protection over the
magazines for most Japanese carriers was minimal. There was always one, and
sometimes several hoists leading upward from each bomb room. However,
flashtight doors were apparently not fitted over the upper apertures of the hoists.6
It can be seen that these arrangements would be barely adequate under normal
peacetime operating conditions. If a large fire were present on the hangar deck,
they might well be disastrous. With such flimsy precautions, it was imperative to
follow proper ordnance-handling techniques, promptly stowing bombs and
torpedoes back below when not in use.
All the navies of the time recognized the potentially lethal nature of fires
and explosions on their carriers and took precautions to prevent them. The
primary Japanese method of fighting fires hinged on isolating the conflagration
and then actively extinguishing the blaze. All Japanese hangar decks were
capable of being subdivided across their width by track-mounted, rolling
fireproof screens. These were placed on either side of each of the elevator wells.
Larger compartments were also divided in the middle. Thus, several
subcompartments could be created at need to isolate a damaged or burning
section of the hangar. If the screens were damaged, however, there were few
physical obstacles to prevent fires from sweeping the length of the hangar.
Both upper and lower hangar decks were equipped with foam systems,
which sprayed a mixture of seawater and soap bubbles onto the deck. The
nozzles for these systems were placed at 1.5 and 2 meters above the deck, and
were fed by fire mains that girdled the deck, much the same way as the fuel
lines. Fire hoses, fed from ring mains powered by pump rooms deep below in the
ship’s machinery spaces, were also available on the hangar decks and flight
decks. However, unlike American carriers, which could divide their mains into
numerous segments, Japanese mains were simply divided port and starboard.7
This meant that a single hit could knock out half the water supply on the ship.
Furthermore, older vessels often used cast-iron water pipes, which were much
more vulnerable to shattering than steel pipes.8 As a result, Japanese carriers
were much less likely to emerge with firefighting water pressure still available
after taking a large bomb hit.
On the lower hangar deck, where explosive fuel vapors were most likely to
accumulate, an additional CO2 “flooding” system was deployed. A perforated
metal pipe running the length of the overhead of each lower hangar deck section
could be used to discharge CO2 and extinguish flames. The CO2 tanks for this
system were stored at the bottom of the elevator wells. Sufficient tankage was
provided to displace 18 percent of the total volume of the lower hangar space.
This system depended on a tight seal of the fireproof partitions; a significant leak
in the curtains or the bulkheads would admit enough oxygen to cause the system
to fail. Even if successful, it was essentially a “one-shot” deal; once the CO2
tanks were discharged, they could not be readily replenished. What the CO2
system did was buy time for the firefighting teams. With the fire temporarily
abated, the men could rush into a space and begin applying water to cool the
debris, thus potentially bringing the fire to a halt in a large section of the hangar
all at once.
All of these mechanisms were to some degree hampered by the construction
of Japanese hangars.9 Fundamentally, the two variables that affect hangar deck
design are whether it is enclosed or unenclosed (in other words, whether it can
be opened readily to the outside air), and whether the flight deck above it is
armored or unarmored. Each of the three major carrier forces in the Second
World War adopted different philosophies on this topic. The Royal Navy
enclosed their hangars on all sides with storerooms, ready rooms, and other
compartments, and placed a heavy armored deck over the top that composed a
significant portion of the ship’s longitudinal strength (a “strength deck” in the
parlance). This had the advantage of directly protecting the hangar from bomb
hits, but it also carried with it serious penalties. First, the addition of a heavy
armored deck high in the ship’s structure made limiting the size of the deck itself
crucial as well as limiting the overall height of the ship. Dual hangar deck
arrangements (i.e., two hangars stacked one atop the other) were impossible in
such designs, because they would have raised topweight unacceptably (and
thereby destabilized the ship). The fact that elevator openings also had to
penetrate the strength deck meant that these openings had to be kept to a
minimum in both number and size. This had a negative effect on aircraft
handling and on how quickly the carrier could spot a strike for launch. As a
result, Royal Navy carriers carried relatively small air wings. British fleet
carriers deployed around 48 aircraft, in comparison to the 60–100 that the U.S.
and Japanese Navies operated from their big flattops.
The U.S. Navy had opted for an unarmored flight deck on its carriers, and
designed its ships so that the hangar deck was the strength deck. The lighter
flight deck structure and lack of compartments surrounding the hangar allowed
the hangar itself to be relatively large. Furthermore, the hangar was open on the
sides in several locations, although it could be closed off from the elements by
means of rolling metal screens. While these screens were not completely light
tight (and therefore presented a hazard to a ship in blacked-out steaming
conditions) or vapor tight, they could also be rolled up to expose the hangar
completely. Thus, American carriers had the advantage of being able to refuel
and warm up aircraft on the hangar deck if need be. Dangerous items in the
hangar, such as explosive ordnance, could be expeditiously disposed of by
simply shoving them out the openings and over the side. These same openings
allowed escort ships to contribute directly to firefighting by letting them spray
water directly into the hangar deck. It was recognized that the unarmored flight
deck (though relatively easy to repair) exposed the hangar below to bomb
damage, and there is no question that the Americans in some cases paid heavily
for this design philosophy (particularly against the late-war kamikaze threat).
The relative merits of armored vs. unarmored can be argued ad nauseam, but the
bottom line is that the Americans were firmly committed to the proposition that
an aircraft carrier was a power projection asset and that power projection was
impossible without an adequately sized air group. Given these imperatives, the
USN was apparently willing to accept the risks attendant in their designs. And it
must be admitted, whatever their failings, that American carriers as a whole were
highly successful during the course of the Pacific war.
The Japanese chose a design direction that in retrospect clearly afforded the
worst of both the U.S. Navy’s and Royal Navy’s philosophies. However, this
was not readily apparent before the war started. Japanese carrier designers
favored enclosed hangars a la the Royal Navy. However, to facilitate the
operation of an adequately sized air wing, most Japanese fleet carriers had at
least two hangar levels; upper and lower. The hangars were not open to the
elements beyond the provision of portholes in some locations and used forced air
ventilation systems. For this reason, aircraft were not warmed up in the hangars,
although refueling was performed there.10 The practical effect of these
arrangements in terms of damage control were potentially dire. Just like putting
a firecracker in a tin pot, any detonation in an enclosed space tends to magnify
the explosion. Japanese hangars were prone to the same phenomenon.
Japanese warships of this era often suffered from overweight and stability
problems. Moreover, with their dual hangar configurations, some Japanese
carriers had fairly tall profiles as well.11 The dual hangar deck design meant that
the Japanese had to reduce topside weight by any means possible. An armored
flight deck a la British carrier designs was simply out of the question. Gun tubs
were supported by braces and struts that would have looked flimsy to a Western
observer, and protruding platforms in some cases carried perforated decks–all in
an attempt to reduce weight. In sum, Japanese carriers were suspect from a
structural standpoint, and were ill prepared to absorb damage and continue
functioning. This was particularly true of S ry and Hiry , which did not benefit
from being constructed atop a relatively sturdy capital ship hull, as Akagi and
Kaga were.
The Japanese suspected some of these weaknesses. In the design of the
newer Sh kaku-class ships, for instance, the hangars contained bulkheads that
were designed to be blown outward to vent the blast overpressures, albeit the
design did not perform as advertised.12 Yet at its root, the Japanese Navy was
wedded to the primacy of the offense. They believed in power projection no less
fervently than the American Navy did. But because of their design philosophies,
Imperial Naval vessels were notably less damage resistant than those of their
opponents. Now, after having suffered a shattering attack at the hands of the
enemy, these weaknesses were about to be exposed in the most graphic manner
imaginable.

Kaga was the first, and in many ways the worst hit of the three. At the time of
the bombing attack, Lt. Kunisada Yoshio, Kaga’s assistant damage-control
officer, had been belowdecks near the hangar, discussing the AA action with
some other crewmen.13 When the bombs came in, the noise was like battleship
guns firing. The ship trembled hard. Soon after, the loudspeaker barked that two
bombs had hit near the rear and there was a fire. Immediately, the lieutenant
ordered all the men near him to grab fire extinguishers and begin to combat the
blaze and sent messengers to roust further men to do the same. The men ran off
to the hangar deck to carry out his orders. Kunisada himself left to gather more
sailors, rounding up about twenty men in short order. He then started making his
way back toward the hangar deck.
The conditions in Kaga’s hangars immediately after the bombing were
horrific beyond description. Bodies and pieces of bodies of Kaga’s armorers and
mechanics lay strewn everywhere among the wreckage of her aircraft. In the
open air, a 1,000-pound general-purpose bomb has a 50 percent chance of killing
anyone standing within a thirty-foot radius of the blast center.14 Inside the
confines of the hangar deck, these lethal effects were greatly magnified. Kaga
lost 269 mechanics on 4 June, most of whom undoubtedly died on the upper
hangar deck in the first few minutes of her ordeal.15 Mechanics, plane handlers,
and armorers alike were slaughtered by the score–blown apart, immolated,
crushed under the aircraft they had been servicing, or mown down by shrapnel as
they crouched on the bare metal deck, seeking shelter where there was none. In
the swelter of the hangar, laboring heavily while pushing planes and ordnance
around, many of the men had stripped down to shorts and short-sleeved cotton
shirts. These men, even if they lived through the bombing, were likely to have
received flash burns. Taken together, the initial hits on Kaga probably killed or
badly wounded almost every man in the upper hangar.

14-1: Known hit locations on Kaga.

The few men who survived there were undoubtedly shocked into near
insensibility. The incredible noise of the explosions had been stunning even to
men standing on the bridge–the noise level in the hangars had been literally
deafening. The general cacophony, in combination with the explosions, fire, and
rapid spread of smoke, meant that many of the men were incapable of action,
either to save the ship or themselves. They would have wandered aimlessly,
unsure of whether or how to escape the conflagration. Many were crawling.
Others, perhaps many of the wounded, would have been unable to move far in
any case. Even for those still mobile, the difference between life and death
would have hinged on the slightest of happenstances. With the fires blazing up in
all directions, running into the wrong burning corridor, or finding a hatch or
companionway blocked in front of you meant death. Shutting oneself into a
smaller compartment, even if it seemed to offer temporary sanctuary from the
blaze in the hangars, brought death as well. Having the good fortune to have left
the hangar for a quick trip to the head or to run an errand belowdecks, might
have meant life.
Though Lieutenant Kunisada may not have realized it, with at least four hits
placed along the length of Kaga’s upper hangar, any realistic hope of containing
the ship’s damage had been destroyed.16 Japanese damage-control practice was
to isolate the damaged area and fight the fire locally. Now isolation of a single
problem area was no longer possible. Instead, Kaga’s hangar had been
transformed into a time bomb. The concussions of the initial hits destroyed both
her port and starboard fire mains, because three of the bombs hit within feet of
the hangar bulkheads along which the mains ran. To make matters worse, the
emergency generator for Kaga’s fire pumps was located, rather incredibly, on
the upper hangar deck on the port forward five-inch gun sponson. This placed
the generator some thirty feet away from the impact of the second bomb, almost
certainly ensuring its outright destruction by fragments.17 The first explosions
likely killed or wounded many of the men in the damage-control stations
scattered about the hangar deck. The fireproof roller curtains were probably open
to facilitate easier movement of aircraft and ordnance. Even if the curtains were
being used, several of them would have been destroyed immediately by the hits
near the forward and aft elevators. Her CO2 suppression system could not be
employed.18 Thus, Kaga’s firefighting capabilities were rendered null and void
from the outset.
Aft of Kunisada, Warrant Officer Morinaga had discovered this already.19
Hearing shouts that the hangar was on fire, he left the flight deck and headed
below. When he arrived, though, the situation was already totally out of control.
None of the fire mains were working, so he and some other men organized a
bucket brigade from the ship’s latrines, which surely must have been one of the
most pathetic images in a day replete with grim irony and empty gestures. Next,
he tried throwing inflammables overboard, but that proved futile as well–
everything was on fire already.
Worse yet, Kaga’s hangar was littered with an incredible array of
munitions. Between the arming of the first and second strike waves and the
inability to stow the land-attack weapons, Kunisada would later estimate that
Kaga’s hangars probably contained twenty torpedoes (240-kilogram warhead),
twenty-eight 800-kilogram bombs, and forty 250-kilogram bombs.20 This
appalling total of nearly 80,000 pounds of explosives lay scattered everywhere,
on aircraft, on bomb carts, or simply shoved against the hangar bulkheads to get
them out of the way. The forward bomb hits both landed within spitting distance
of the ordnance lift, which was abreast the midships aircraft elevator. The area
around this lift was piled with 800-kilogram bombs waiting to be sent back
below to the magazines. With the hangars fully enclosed, none of these weapons
could now be jettisoned. The bombs were heavy enough, but the torpedoes were
absolutely impossible to move. They weighed roughly 1,800 pounds apiece and
were most likely affixed to an airplane to boot. With the elevators destroyed or
inaccessible, there was no possibility of carrying them topside and heaving them
overboard. And there was no way to move them out of harm’s way on the hangar
deck, since there were fires burning literally everywhere.
Far worse, though, was the fact that the American attack had caught Kaga
with her fueling system unsecured. Her fuel mains had almost certainly been
ruptured in one or more places by the hits. Even if only the Type 97s and Zeros
were fully gassed, there were still almost 10,000 gallons of fuel sloshing about in
the aircraft, in addition to what was now pouring from the fuel lines.21 Freely
flowing aviation fuel being dumped from many sources meant that the fuel was
being distributed in large slicks all over the hangar deck. Not all of it was on fire
yet. But in the presence of high ambient temperatures, aviation gasoline was now
vaporizing at a prodigious rate. Though no one probably knew it, a catastrophic
explosion on board Kaga could not be long in coming.

Much like Kaga, the situation on board S ry was beyond redemption in a

matter of moments. The American bombs had landed almost perfectly so as to
cause the maximum destruction possible. S ry ’s hangars were divided into
three fireproof bays, but Yorktown’s bombers had neatly deposited a 1,000-
pound bomb into each of them, destroying any possibility of localizing the
blazes. The first hit had demolished the starboard side of the hangar,
undoubtedly starting fires in the five-inch ammo ready room for mounts No. 1
and No. 3. For some reason, the second hit had penetrated very deeply, slicing
through the upper hangar to slam into the lower hangar, into the midst of Sdryu’s
kanbaku squadron. In the process, it had demolished the officers quarters on the
port side of the hangar and blown fragments through the starboard bulkhead
protecting the boiler uptakes, destroying them and taking the boilers off line.22
The third bomb landed almost directly on the No. 4 arrestor wire, detonating in
the upper hangar amidst the Type 97 kank rearming from the Midway strike.
This hit destroyed numerous aircraft and engulfed the rear of the hangar in fire.
Thus, at the end of the attack, S ry found herself in a similar but worse state (if
such were possible) than Kaga–not only afire from stem to stern, but also having
suffered damage to both levels of the hangar. With fires already blazing on the
lower hangar deck, and with no real way of fighting them in the boiler uptakes,
workshops, and electrical trunks located just below the area of the hit, the
overheads of boiler rooms Nos. 3, 5, and 6 would soon be directly exposed to the
blaze. Equally as bad, Sdryu’s lighter construction meant that the hits did
immediate, and probably irreparable, structural damage.

14-2: Known hit locations on S ry .

The decimation of S ry ’s hangar crews was part and parcel with the
terrible physical damage meted out to the ship. The horrific butchery inflicted in
Kaga’s hangars was replicated here in full measure. Being the smallest of the
Midway carriers, the slaughter was probably even worse. A total of 419 of S ry
’s mechanics, maintenance personnel, and seamen died this day, and the
immolation of the hangar decks in the first minutes undoubtedly accounted for
the bulk of these casualties. Indeed, a third of S ry ’s crew may well have been
dead by the time the last of the American dive-bombers completed its attack.
None of S ry ’s command staff, of course, could know the particulars of
the disaster that had befallen their ship, but atop the island, Gunnery Officer
Kanao could tell that the situation was grave. The ship was already smoking
from stem to stern, thick vapors pouring forth from the bombs’ wounds and
spreading in black sheets across the casualties lying on the flight deck. As he
cast his gaze southward, he could see Akagi. She was still moving at a good
speed, but she too was afire.
There was nothing left for Kanao to do at the air defense post.23 Everyone
there was dead, and the director was out of action. Already he could hear heavy
internal explosions beginning; some were sharp and jarring.24 Others held the
muffled thunder that betrayed deep damage to the ship’s innards. He had no
communication with any area in the ship, but he could imagine the horrible
destruction being wrought below. Intense heat and smoke had already driven
him back from the forward end of the air defense station in any case. He began
climbing down the vertical steel ladder to the bridge. Peeking in, he was
surprised to find that the command staff was still there–Captain Yanagimoto,
Executive Officer Ohara, hik ch Kusumoto, and the navigator, Lieutenant
Commander Asanoumi. Several of them were burned, but Yanagimoto was still
determined to fight the ship. Shamed by abandoning his post while the bridge
staff was still alive, Kanao determined to regain the top of the bridge and carry
on with his duties. He turned, and began mounting the metal ladder once again.
Yet, as he did so, another explosion rocked S ry and knocked Kanao from his
perch. Instinctively, he grabbed for a line near to hand. But instead of checking
his fall, it merely dropped him–albeit somewhat more softly than if he had
fallen–down into the ocean below! There he stayed, clinging to the line, which
still hung suspended from somewhere above.
Belowdecks in the engine spaces, Lieutenant Naganuma listened to the evil
thunder of the explosions just above their heads. Suddenly, a violent crash
bulged the deck down toward them, and red fire charged out of the ventilation
ducts. Immediately, the order was given to shut them, but the explosions had
warped the openings to such an extent that the smoke could not be stopped
completely. The men began to cluster around those ducts that still brought in
fresh air, sucking in each clean breath as if it were ambrosia.25 Naganuma was
suddenly struck by the image of dying carp, desperately gasping for air. The
temperature was already beginning to rise alarmingly.

On board Hiry , Yamaguchi and the staff of CarDiv 2 greeted the panoply of
destruction that had befallen the Mobile Force with somber disbelief. The
magnitude of the disaster lent an almost surreal quality to the situation–it was
impossible for the men to truly comprehend what had just happened.
Belowdecks, the men had to use their imaginations to picture the disaster
unfolding, but given the tones of the voices over the loudspeakers or men
running down from above with news, it was not hard to realize. In Hiry ’s main
engine control room, Chief Engineer Aimune Kunize listened grimly as a voice
from the bridge, probably Yamaguchi’s or Kaku’s, reported that all of the other
carriers were hit, and that their teammate S ry , in particular, was burning very
badly. It was up to the Hiry to carry on the fight.26

14-3: Known hit locations on Akagi.

Down in Hiry ’s ready room, one of her flight leaders, Lt. Shigematsu
Yasuhiro, burst in amidst the lounging pilots. There he found Lieutenants
Tomonaga and Hashimoto relaxing. “Hey!” he shouted to the assembled, “The
Akagi’s damaged, the Kaga and S ry are burning–we’re the only ship that
hasn’t been hit!” Rushing back topside, they joined the other crewmen on Hiry
’s flight deck gazing mutely on the terrible scene. Near at hand, S ry was
heavily afire. Further aft, the other two carriers were clearly hit as well, with
Kaga burning furiously. Yamaguchi tried to make out the situation on Akagi.
She was still steaming northward. To the bridge watch, he announced that the
flagship was still proceeding at good speed, and her damage appeared to be
slight.27

Appearances were deceptive. In reality, Dick Best’s bomb had landed in a

position to do terrible damage to Akagi, although she did not “brew up” as
quickly as her two stricken comrades. The hit undoubtedly destroyed the
fireproof curtain between the hangar and the midships elevator well just forward,
most likely blowing flaming debris downward into the lower hangar deck. The
bomb also smashed the 4.7-inch ready ammunition lockers for the port-side AA
guns, which were located adjacent to the impact area. Far worse, of course, was
its effect on the torpedo aircraft just about to be spotted for the upcoming strike.
These aircraft, eighteen in all, were fully fueled and armed with torpedoes. The
bomb would have landed right on top of the aircraft parked nearest the elevator.
It appears that the hit took some time to initiate a large blaze on the hangar
deck. Certainly, fire was not observed on the flight deck for several minutes
afterward. This indicates that Akagi’s damage was initially fairly localized. Had
her damage-control teams been able to react swiftly and appropriately to the
situation, the fire might have been brought under control before it transformed
itself into a more widespread conflagration. However, several factors conspired
against this. The first, of course, was the condition of the hangar decks, which
were packed with combat-loaded aircraft. A fire on so much as one of these,
unless promptly extinguished, spelled disaster. Yet, getting to the blaze through
the wreckage surrounding the hit would have been difficult. The second factor
was the condition of the midships elevator. It is possible that when the elevator
was dumped into its well, fire may have caught hold and smoldered underneath
it in the machinery pit. With the elevator lying overtop, reaching the flames
would have posed serious problems to any damage-control team. Whatever the
situation, within about three minutes, things began to get out of hand, as the first
of an interminable series of induced explosions took hold.
At 1029 Captain Aoki, keenly aware that the ordnance hoists gave direct
access to the bomb and torpedo rooms below, gave the order to flood the ship’s
magazines. The forward storage areas complied at once, but the situation aft was
more complex. According to Nagumo’s report, the rear magazines could not be
immediately flooded “because of valve damages.”28 This further supports the
supposition that the rear portion of Akagi had suffered extensive shock damage
from a near miss aft.
At 1032 Akagi attempted to use the CO2 fire-suppression system located on
the lower hangar deck to extinguish the blaze.29 This indicates that the fire was
already well established there within minutes of the initial attack. However, if
the CO2 system could be brought into play successfully, the fire would be
confined to the upper hangar deck only, which presumably could then be
brought under control. In such a fashion Captain Aoki’s men would have been
able to establish a firebreak of sorts and given themselves time and room to
maneuver against the blaze above. It would also protect the ship’s engines, and
thereby Akagi’s pumping capacity, from further damage.
But it was not to be. With the fireproof screens around the central elevator
well gone, it was impossible to seal off the damaged areas. It is probable, too,
that the CO 2flasks had been destroyed by the bomb, because they were typically
housed at the bottom of the elevator well. If Akagi’s elevator had been dumped
into its shaft, they were unlikely to have survived. As a result, Akagi’s efforts
may have been foredoomed, although the damage-control personnel may not
have been able to get close enough to the center elevator to realize that the
system was nonfunctional.
Less likely is the possibility that the system worked, at least initially, or at
least in some areas of the lower hangar. However, fires extinguished by CO2-
based systems have a nasty tendency of reigniting unless the inert gas can be
constantly replenished or the area in question can then be consistently doused
with enough water to keep smoldering combustibles below their ignition point.30
Either way, the line of the lower hangar deck apparently could not be held. One
can only imagine the gloom that must have pervaded Akagi’s crew when this
attempt to prevent the fires from creeping lower into the ship was seen to be
unsuccessful.

In the scant minutes wherein all this had transpired, the air battle continued
largely unabated. As was previously related, the remnants of VT-3 were just
now, at 1035, beginning their final runs against Hiry . American dive-bombers,
their ordnance expended, were trying to exit the scene. The Zeros, not
surprisingly, were doing their level best to exact some measure of retribution for
the calamity that had just befallen their carriers. Having shed their altitude in the
course of their attacks, the SBDs were on the deck, usually alone or in small
groups. Like any attack plane, their only real protection against a Zero was to
stick in a tight formation of several aircraft and use the grouped firepower of
their machine guns to fend off attacks. By themselves, Dauntlesses were
normally rather vulnerable. However, now relieved of their bombs, and already
short of fuel, they were at least fairly nimble. By racing away on the deck, they
were also protected from attacks from below. Nevertheless, enraged by the
success of the attack, the Japanese fighters went after them. Several SBDs were
badly shot up and were lucky to be able to land on their carriers later in the day.
Yet in a group, SBDs were much more difficult targets than TBDs. Indeed, the
Japanese probably lost almost as many fighters in the immediate aftermath of the
attack than they had in the half hour preceding it.

At about the same time on board Kaga, the bill for a full morning’s worth of
sloppy ammunition stowage procedures came due with cataclysmic interest.
Within a few minutes after the initial hits, as aviation fuel continued pouring
from the mains onto the deck, the combination of heated vapor and live flame
triggered a fuel-air explosion. The initial blast was so massive that battleship
Haruna’s executive officer was certain that no one on Kaga could have
survived.31 An enormous orange-black fireball mushroomed skyward and was
rapidly followed by at least six more devastating blasts.32 Not surprisingly, the
retiring American aviators could not help but notice the explosions as well.33
Lieutenant Kunisada, with his hastily assembled damage-control team, had
just been in the process of making his way into Kaga’s hangar when he and his
men were blown to the deck by the enormous explosion.34 Instantly, all light was
lost, and they were plunged into darkness. Reaching into his pocket, Kunisada
took out a flashlight and shone it around. Suddenly someone grabbed his leg.
Aiming the light down, he saw a chief machinist, who groaned “I’m hit.”
Kunisada was able to make out that the man’s leg was broken and his ankle
twisted the wrong way. He leaned down to lift him up and try and help him to a
side room away from the hangar, when a second terrible explosion knocked both
men to the deck. Kunisada landed hard, and knew no more.
Crouching on the flight deck near the bridge, Amagai was stunned to watch
the blasts literally blow out the hangar sides and hurl flame, equipment, and the
bodies of crewmen into the water. As the explosions continued, the flames began
moving toward the air station. All communications were severed with the rest of
the ship–none of the voice tubes were operating. Amagai was momentarily
consumed by sorrow for the men caught in the hangars and turned his eyes
briefly toward the heavens. Looking away from the fires, he then noticed that
Akagi and S ry were both ablaze as well. S ry was already dead in the water.
Amagai’s heart was seared by these images, and he felt unendurable
mortification at the disaster that had overtaken the force. It was too much to be
borne.35
With communications out and fires advancing toward him, the bridge was
no place to stay, and Amagai scrambled down to the boat deck two levels below.
Whether he knew it or not, he was Kaga’s senior surviving officer now, and, as
such, command of the carrier fell to him. Yet, his exercise of command was
largely directionless and did little to avail Kaga’s plight. Beyond the outright
damage to the ship and loss of communications, three less-apparent factors were
working against Amagai’s ability to fight the ship. The first was that Amagai
apparently did not know that he was in charge of the situation.36 Even if he had,
though, his ability to control the damage-control operations would have been
hampered by a second failing–Japanese overreliance on its officer corps.
The Imperial fleet depended much more heavily on its officers of all ranks
to perform complex technical operations than either the U.S. or Royal British
Navies. Japanese officers, since they were committed to the force for an
extended period of time, were given much more technical training than the
enlisted men. Accordingly, Japanese officers in many cases fulfilled the role that
in Western navies was accomplished by senior enlisted men. The importance of
the officer corps in this respect is reflected by the fact that the Japanese Navy
had a higher percentage of officers in its ship crews than its Western
counterparts did. With Kaga’s senior officer corps decapitated by the initial
attack, she was in an inherently inferior position with regard to damage control.
The third factor was Commander Amagai himself. As an aviator, he had
little or no direct experience with fighting fires, coordinating communications,
directing work parties, or any of the other myriad imperatives entailed in
commanding a ship in extremis.37 Damage control, at least as far as the Imperial
Japanese Navy was concerned, was the preserve of specialists. Whereas by the
end of the war, the U.S. Navy would push damage-control training and
technique down through the ranks until everyone on board was familiar with the
topic, the Japanese had no such conception. Damage control was a
supernumerary function, handled strictly by engineering personnel. As a result,
the death of her two senior engineering commanders meant that none of the
senior officers left on board Kaga really had any idea of how to contain her
damage, least of all the man nominally in charge of her.38 Engineering personnel
like Lieutenant Kunisada, who had the most knowledge of the survivors, were so
far down the command chain that they, too, didn’t realize that they were the last
hope of the ship. None of these things boded well for Kaga’s odds of survival,
and they help explain why Kaga was fated to suffer the highest casualties of any
of the four carriers this day.

At 1040, though heavily damaged, Akagi was still proceeding north at battle
speed 3. Suddenly, an American plane was spotted 20 degrees off the starboard
bow.39 Captain Aoki immediately ordered the helm put hard over to starboard to
present the interloper with a more difficult target angle. The AA guns opened up
as well, although their fire was less intense than it had been. The American plane
passed to port without incident. But when Aoki ordered the rudder amidships,
nothing happened. Akagi continued in a clockwise circle, her rudder jammed at
30 degrees to starboard. Aoki repeated the order, then immediately ordered
engineering to check out the problem.40
Akagi’s steering failure at this juncture is the final, conclusive piece of
evidence supporting the aft bomb “hit” actually being a very near miss off the
fantail. Nagumo’s staff officer for navigation, Sasabe Toshisaburo, flatly stated
that the aft hit “destroyed Akagi’s rudder.”41 The Nagumo Report also mentions
that Akagi’s steering was damaged at 1042. This timing strongly indicates that
the rudder failed as a result of some sort of previous damage, because no direct
damage was being done to Akagi’s engineering spaces at this time, and the
deaths of the engineering staff in the area by smoke inhalation (if indeed there
were casualties there yet) would not have resulted in a steering casualty.
It is difficult to construct a damage scenario wherein the effects of a bomb
hit on the flight deck aft would have affected the rudder in this fashion. A hit in
this region would have vented the bomb’s blast down into the atmosphere above
the boat deck, rather than being transmitted directly to the ship’s structure. By
contrast, a near miss would have placed the 1,000-pound bomb in the water very
near the ship’s rudder. Water is an excellent conductor of shock waves–much
better than steel. It must be recalled, too, that older warships such as Akagi were
very prone to shock-related damage, as the physical principles underlying such
damage were not well understood at the time of her construction.42 A hit in the
water close aboard would have transmitted a massive hammer blow to the hull
structure and rudder that Akagi’s structure would have been ill prepared to
handle.
A hit close aboard the aft section of the vessel also makes sense in the
context of the American attack profile. Best’s three-plane element had attacked
from 80 degrees off Akagi’s port bow, whereupon she apparently began an
evasive turn to starboard. As such, the American bombs would have been
coming down port to starboard across her beam. On impact, a 1,000-pound
bomb would be traveling at about 450 feet/second at an angle of perhaps 15–25
degrees from the vertical.43 A bomb just missing the overhang on the port edge
of the flight deck aft would continue downward and inward toward the ship,
smacking into the water close aboard, and very near the rudder. Akagi’s rudders
included heavy lateral bracing connecting the steering post assembly to the
ship’s side hull, thus providing a direct mechanism for transmitting shock
stresses. The mining effect and subsequent whiplash from a 1,000-pound bomb
detonating nearby would almost certainly have damaged the port rudder, causing
it to jam later. Likewise, the mention of sprung watertight doors in the magazine,
and the inability of flooding mechanisms to function, is indicative of the same
sort of damage.
A crew would almost certainly have been dispatched immediately to
diagnose the steering problem.44 The engine spaces were already feeling the
effects of the fire above, of course, with smoke being sucked down the ventilator
intakes and pouring into the engineering compartments despite the best efforts to
seal up the vents. Aoki’s inquiry regarding the loss of steering must have been
met with a groan–as if they didn’t have enough troubles already. The most likely
culprits for the steering failure would have been the steering telemotor controls.
Given the proximity of Best’s bomb hit to the bridge, it wouldn’t have been
unlikely for the wires there to have been cut. But apparently that wasn’t the
problem, nor were the stern steering motors at fault. The problem therefore lay
with the steering mechanism itself.45 About this time, Captain Aoki ordered the
engines stopped. Then, at 1042 the chief engineer ordered the evacuation of the
engine spaces, telling the men to report to damage-control stations topside.46 It is
likely, though, that a damage-control team would have continued trying to fix
the rudder.

14-4: Cross section of Akagi at frame 220 in the area of the rudders, showing the
likely trajectory of a near-miss bomb hitting the plane guard netting on the edges
of the flight deck.

With the steering motors apparently in good condition, the men would have
proceeded aft into the rudder room itself. The twin rudder posts, each taller than
a man, were jammed into this tiny space where the ship’s hull tapered sharply
back to the stern. The aft end of the rudder room terminated in a six-foot-deep
pit, where the posts descended to their watertight seals, and then out through the
bottom of the hull. It wouldn’t have taken long for the men to realize that the
port rudder was damaged and would no longer turn.
Next, the emergency oil pump would have been tried, at which point the
engineers would doubtless have traded fatalistic glances among themselves.
They knew the chances of this hand-operated device working were slim indeed.
It was common knowledge among the engineering staff that emergency steering
arrangements on board their warships were unsatisfactory–the manual oil pump
simply didn’t have the torque necessary to turn the rudder post and its enormous
counterbalance.47
Finally, in mounting desperation, some of the men would have groped their
way back forward to fetch heavy screw jacks. There were lugs welded onto the
sides of the tillers for this very purpose, and they would have rigged them in
haste. But these efforts must have failed too; the port rudder simply would not
move. Akagi was no longer navigable, and the prospects of her being able to
steer any time soon seemed remote. Whether the engineers then abandoned this
compartment or stayed, gagging and losing strength, to continue their efforts is
unknown.48 Equally unknown is whether they were able to apprise Aoki or Chief
Engineer Tampo Yoshibumi of this situation before the command spaces topside
were abandoned.
As it happened, shortly after Akagi’s steering failed, the situation on the
bridge had deteriorated from merely bad to overtly life threatening. The fire,
which had been confined to the hangar deck initially, had now broken through
the flight deck, probably via the elevator well. At 1043 one of the two Zeros in
Kimura’s sh tai that hadn’t made it off the deck caught fire directly abreast the
bridge.49 Immediately, a plume of heavy smoke began choking the men in the
command area. It was clearly time to leave before Nagumo and his staff were
roasted.
On the bridge, a singularly unpleasant debate had already been occurring
for the past several minutes.50 Perhaps numbed by fatigue, or a simple stunned
incomprehension of the state of the ship, Nagumo was resisting shifting his flag
to another vessel. Muttering “It is not time yet,” the admiral stubbornly refused
to face the facts and stood rooted to the deck near the ship’s compass. Kusaka
was getting nowhere in his efforts to persuade the admiral, when Captain Aoki
finally spoke, saying to Kusaka, “Chief of Staff, as the ship’s Captain, I am
going to take care of this ship with all responsibility, so I urge you, the
Commander in Chief, and all other staff officers to leave this vessel as soon as
possible, so that the command of the force may be continued.”51 Thus fortified,
Kusaka lost no time in applying his own pressure–the ship was afire and dead in
the water, he pointed out. The radios were out, and it was clear that they simply
could not longer direct the battle from her. Nagumo had his duty to do, Kusaka
reminded him, and he owed it to the fleet to carry on the battle. Finally, Nagumo
relented.
Unfortunately, leaving Akagi’s bridge wasn’t as easy now as it would have
been even five minutes before. The starboard side of the island was threatened
by the flames; the door from the briefing room at the base of the island now
opened directly onto the fire, and the air-control platform at the rear of the island
was also being scorched.52 The port side of the island was a sheer cliff, dropping
eighty-odd feet straight down to the ocean below–a killing fall. Running down
the ladder to look for a way out below, the staff flag secretary, Commander
Nishibayashi, reported back that there was no escape that way, either. Thus, the
only way down now was through the windows at the front of the bridge.
Someone found a line, secured it to one of the window frames, and out they
went.
Or almost. The distance was some fourteen feet down to the small fire-
control platform at the front of the island, and then another six to the flight deck
itself. In the event, it seemed rather more. Not only that, but Akagi’s bridge
windows were only about twenty inches on a side. The diminutive Nagumo
could scramble through without issue; the burlier Kusaka found it a rather tight
fit. A few shoves from the staff, though, and he was expelled from the bridge.
Whether from his rather corklike exit, or because rappelling down sheer metal
structures was apparently not a normal part of a staff officer’s duties, Kusaka
proceeded mostly to fall to the platform below, badly spraining both his ankles,
and burning himself for good measure.53
The weakened Fuchida found himself in worse straits yet. The last officer
out of the bridge, he started shinnying down the line and had almost made it to
the fire-control platform when an explosion knocked him roughly all the way to
the flight deck. Where Kusaka had gotten away with mere sprains, Fuchida
found himself with two badly broken legs, his ankles and arches crushed.
Landing on the deck like a sack of grain, he simply lay there. Limping, even
crawling away was out of the question. And the flames were advancing all the
while. Thinking that this was the end, Fuchida considered his fate calmly,
realizing that all he felt was an utter weariness at the whole affair. His clothing
began to smolder from the heat. Then, miraculously, two enlisted men arrived on
the scene in the nick of time. They picked him up and carried him forward to the
anchor deck on the bow, where he rejoined Nagumo and the staff of First Air
Fleet.54
Before leaving the bridge, Kusaka had directed Nowaki to come alongside
to receive the admiral. However, light cruiser Nagara had drawn near as well.
Nowaki’s launch, instead of ferrying the admiral to the destroyer, was ordered to
take him and his staff to the cruiser. Not only was Nagara a larger vessel, but
also she and all her sisters were designed to operate as destroyer squadron
flagships, and as such had better communications facilities than their charges.
Fuchida, although not part of the admiral’s staff, was taken along as well.55
Nagumo boarded the launch, followed by the rest of the evacuees. As
Genda was waiting to embark, a petty officer on Akagi’s bow noticed that his
hand had been burned.56 Pulling off one of his own white gloves, the man
handed it to Genda, urging him to put it on. Turning to go, Genda was halted
again by his young orderly, who had braved the darkness belowdecks to retrieve
Genda’s bank deposit book and personal seal (han) from his cabin. Genda was
deeply moved by the kindness of the two sailors, both of whom he was now
leaving behind to whatever fate awaited them. But Nagumo’s staff were waiting,
and Genda boarded the launch. The crew began pulling on the oars. On board
Akagi, the survivors watched them go, then turned back to the desperate business
at hand.

At the same time Nagumo was departing Akagi, a singularly less dignified and
more massive debarkation was already under way on S ry . Her damage had
been so rapid and severe, and the slaughter of her crew so wholesale, that only
cursory efforts were made to save her. She had lost power almost immediately
and by 1040 had slewed to a dead stop in the water, afire from stem to stern.
Emergency steering arrangements were tried at 1043, but in the absence of
propulsion they were superfluous in any case.57 Clouds of whitish smoke poured
from her port side, and the hangars were already completely consumed with
fire.58
Executive Officer Ohara, despite his severe burns, had left the bridge to try
and take over the firefighting efforts. Moving down a deck to the air-control
platform, he tried to assess the situation, but all communications were out. It was
clear, though, that the ship’s fire mains were destroyed. Leaving the air station
for the flight deck, he finally fainted from his wounds and fell to the deck. There,
another explosion must have blown him over the side without his even being
aware. The gods smiled on the injured man, for his trajectory cast him clear of
the lifeboat davits and other impaling obstacles and into the water beyond. He
survived the long trip down to the ocean none the worse for wear. When Ohara
came to, he found another sailor, a pharmacist’s mate, swimming next to him
and slapping him to keep him from fainting again and drowning.59 Ohara would
spend the next several hours in the water before being rescued.
On the bridge, Captain Yanagimoto quickly drew the obvious conclusion–S
ry was doomed. At 1045 he gave the order to abandon ship.60 Whether or not
the order reached all the men, though, was questionable, as communications with
the rest of the ship were undoubtedly disrupted. Whatever the reason, either the
captain’s order, or simply wishing to preserve their lives, men had already begun
jumping into the water around the ship. Others were deposited there rather more
bodily, as explosions continued wracking the ship. S ry had remained under
command a mere twenty minutes from the time the first bomb struck. The ordeal
of her men, though, was far from over.

With Admiral Nagumo in the process of transferring his flag, command over Kid
Butai briefly devolved on the screen’s commander, RADM Abe Hiroaki,
commander of CruDiv 8. Abe wasted little time in assessing the situation and
initiating action. He had received a message at 1045 from Chikuma, informing
him that her No. 5 plane had sighted “5 additional cruisers and 5 destroyers”
some 130 miles from Midway. Dutifully forwarding that message to Yamamoto
at 1047, he followed up three minutes later with a grim communique: “Fires are
raging aboard the Kaga, S ry , and Akagi resulting from attacks carried out by
enemy land-based and carrier-based attack planes. We plan to have the Hiry
engage the enemy carriers. In the meantime, we are temporarily retiring to the
north, and assembling our forces.”61 Immediately thereafter, Abe sent a terse
message to Admiral Yamaguchi, “Attack the enemy carriers.”

14-5: Lt. Kobayashi Michio, commander of Hiry ’s 1054 strike force. The
consummate skill of Kobayashi’s unit was vividly demonstrated during the
afternoon of 4 June. (Photo courtesy Michael Wenger)

Six hundred miles to the west, Yamamoto’s Main Body was plowing along
in an allegorically apropos fog. The dense mists that had bedeviled Kid Butai
several days before now surrounded the commander in chief ’s formation.
Several ships, including battleship Nagato, had gotten lost in the soup, slowing
their progress and fraying nerves. Admiral Yamamoto sat silently, peering out of
the windows at the white mantle. Suddenly, Yamato’s chief signal officer burst
onto the bridge, his face grim, and handed Yamamoto a message form.
Yamamoto read it, stunned. He let out a groan, then still staring out at the mists
beyond, handed it back wordlessly to the signalman. To another sailor on the
bridge, it seemed that the commander in chief had been turned to stone–not so
much as an eyelid twitched on his countenance.62

On board Hiry , Yamaguchi Tamon had needed no prompting to undertake

offensive action. When Admiral Abe’s message ordering him to attack was
received at 1050, he was, in fact, just minutes away from launching. Not
surprisingly, frantic preparations had been under way on Hiry to get a
counterstrike in the air since the American attack. The job fell to Hiry ’s dive-
bomber unit, under the command of Lt. Kobayashi Michio, buntaicho.
Kobayashi and his unit were widely regarded as among the best in the fleet.63 He
would personally lead the first ch tai of nine aircraft, while his deputy, Lt.
Yamashita Michiji, would lead the second chutai. Accompanying Kobayashi’s
eighteen Type 99 aircraft would be six Zeros under the command of Lieutenant
Shigematsu, junior fighter buntaicho. He and the other pilots in the ch tai had
already participated in the morning strike. Now Shigematsu led a grab bag
collection of aircraft on this vital mission. There was no time to wait to rearm
Tomonaga’s remaining Type 97s, so this would have to be a one-dimensional
strike.64
Kobayashi’s aircraft were equipped with a standard antiship loadout
wherein two-thirds of the aircraft carried 250-kilogram semi armor-piercing
bombs, while the remaining third (one plane in each shotai) carried a 242-
kilogram high-explosive land bomb fused for instantaneous detonation. The
high-explosive weapons were intended to destroy AA guns and their crews,
thereby hopefully suppressing the target’s antiaircraft fire and making the task of
the other aircraft that much easier.66

14-6: Hiry launching aircraft during the Battle of Midway.65 This photograph,
heretofore seen only rarely in the West, shows one Type 99 dive-bomber taking
off and a second already in the air off Hiry ’s port bow. Previously labeled as
having been taken sometime between 1 and 3 June, this photograph more likely
shows Kobayashi’s force departing the carrier at 1057 on 4 June. If so, it is one
of the few photos we have of the Japanese carriers during the battle, and perhaps
the only one taken from another Japanese vessel. Note the escort destroyer
visible almost on the horizon just aft of Hiry ’s flight deck. A second is barely
visible on the horizon just forward of the 25-mm antiaircaft tubs on Hiry ’s bow.
(Photo courtesy KK Bestsellers)

It was Captain Kaku who gave the final preflight briefing to the assembled
pilots. In contrast to this morning’s optimistic atmosphere, there was none of the
usual banter and kidding among the pilots; the mood was now one of deadly
seriousness. The men stood silent as Kaku laid out the objectives for the strike.
Hiryyu’s commander reminded them that theirs was the last intact aircraft unit in
the fleet. Not only did they need to find the enemy and attack effectively, they
also needed to return as large a percentage of their aircraft to Hiry ’s decks as
possible for use in future operations. Therefore, Kaku urged caution; they must
attack judiciously, not rashly. Grimly determined to do their best, the men ran to
their planes and mounted.
At 1054, with the funeral pyres of CarDiv 1 still clearly visible on the
southern horizon and her sister a raging bonfire nearby, Hiryyu turned back east
into the wind and began launching. All the aircraft were airborne by about 1058.
Standing in the crew pits next to the flight deck, the deck crews wished them a
silent farewell–all the hopes of the fleet now hung on the slender thread of Hiry
’s air group. To the force, Yamaguchi sent the following message: “All our
planes are taking off now for the purpose of destroying the enemy carriers.”67
15

Up the Steel Steps–1100–1200

After Kobayashi was launched, Hiry apparently remained headed northeast on

course 30 degrees and immediately brought down seven of Akagi’s combat air
patrol fighters. As it developed, the combination of Hiry ’s earlier evasive
maneuvers against VT-3 and her recent move into the wind to launch aircraft
had brought her back into the vicinity of S ry . The condition of her wounded
sister ship was positively dreadful. Flames were licking all along the flight deck,
and dense clouds of black smoke were boiling from her innards. One crewman
on board Hiry remarked that “She looked like a giant daikon radish that had
been sliced in two. Now [in places] it was possible to see right through her to the
other side.”1 On the bridge, Yamaguchi turned to one of Hiry ’s officers. “Can
we contact her?” he asked. “I will try,” the man replied and began to snap the
shutters of a small signal lamp. “Try to save your carrier!” Yamaguchi signaled.
The message was sent two or three times toward the fire-wracked flattop, but
there was no reply.
Saddened, Yamaguchi turned away from the horrible spectacle. There was
little anyone could do. However, one of Hiry ’s consorts, cruiser Chikuma, had
also been drawn like a moth to S ry ’s fiery agony and was even now slowing
to a stop. At 1112 she sent over her No. 2 cutter to the stricken carrier’s
forecastle, where a damage-control party could be seen. Embarked on the cutter
was a pharmacist’s mate and seven sailors, clearly more to help with tending the
wounded than with any firefighting. Hiry herself could not linger. After their
brief intersection, S ry was rapidly left behind to join the other two forlorn
smoke columns further astern. It was the last time the men on board Hiry would
see their sister ship.
Having sent off the counterstrike, Yamaguchi shortly received a signal from
Chikuma’s No. 5 plane, which had relieved Tone No. 4. He radioed at 1110:
“The enemy is in position bearing 70 degrees, distance 90 miles from our fleet’s
position.” The enemy was indeed very close at hand. In fact, unbeknownst to
Nagumo or Yamaguchi, Chikuma No. 5 was in contact with an entirely different
American carrier force than Amari had originally detected. This was TF 17,
centered around Yorktown. Amari had encountered it on his way back to Kid
Butai. Proceeding to the spot of Amari’s latest sighting report, Chikuma No. 5
had duly stumbled across Yorktown as well.
What Yamaguchi thought of the enemy’s proximity has not been recorded.
Indeed, for the first forty-five minutes or so after Kid Butai’s catastrophic
bombing, Yamaguchi’s actions were largely preprogrammed in any case. His
last orders from Nagumo had been to assume a course of 030 degrees and close
the enemy preparatory to launching a counterstrike. Strictly speaking, the attack
on Kaga, S ry , and Akagi did not alter these orders a whit. Yamaguchi’s
launching his strike against Yorktown was not a response to the American attack
at all, but simply the continuation of Nagumo’s prior intentions. Hiry ’s
behavior confirms this. She dodged VT-3’s attack in the 1030–1035 time frame,
then apparently resumed 030 and went ahead with her launch. Furthermore, for a
time at least, Akagi had followed her, until dropping back at 1042. At 1120,
having left S ry astern, Yamaguchi blinkered all ships an update: “Second
wave composed of 18 bombers and 5 fighters has taken off. Plan to have an
additional 9 ship-based attack planes and 3 fighters take off in one hour. Hiry
plans to proceed towards the enemy on present course.”2
If Hiry was proceeding toward the enemy, she was doing so largely alone.
Apart from a pair of destroyers, the other ships of Kid Butai appear to have
been busy elsewhere. Nagara was alongside Akagi, collecting Admiral Nagumo.
Cruiser Tone and BatDiv 3 were apparently somewhere between Hiry and
Nagara, still within blinker distance of both parties, and thereby forming a
“signal bridge” of sorts that linked the two.3 Thus, Yamaguchi was operating
without the benefit of any heavy cover.
After Kobayashi’s departure, Hiry began arming what remained of her
kank squadron for launch, hopefully before noon. Of the torpedo attack aircraft,
seven were clearly serviceable, and another pair (including Tomonaga’s)
apparently had been patched up sufficiently to make the trip. Providentially, at
1130 another kank deposited itself on Hiry ’s deck. This was an Akagi aircraft
flown by WO Suzuki Shigeru. Suzuki had taken off at 1015 from the flagship for
a scouting mission, but had turned back (for reasons unknown) shortly
thereafter. Finding his ship in flames, he had landed on Hiry instead.4 Under
normal circumstances, the addition of a single torpedo plane to the roster would
hardly have been cause for celebration, but in this case every plane counted.
Suzuki’s bird was promptly refueled and armed.
 It was clear, too, that in order to make maximum usage of the meager assets
at hand, it was imperative that good intelligence on the enemy’s movements
continue to be gathered. A happy thought, indeed, it was about six hours late in
occurring to the Japanese. However, Yamaguchi relayed a message to CruDiv 8
at 1130, ordering additional aircraft to maintain contact with the enemy.
Unfortunately, Japan’s woes in the scouting department were ongoing. Amari’s
No. 4 plane had been replaced by Chikuma’s No. 5 aircraft. However, the pilot
of this new arrival, PO1c Takezaki Masatake, had thus far only observed TF 17
and Yorktown. As it developed, at the same time that Chikuma No. 5 was
sending her sighting report at 1110, S ry ’s Type 2 aircraft was sending back a
similar report detailing the position of TF 16. Unfortunately, it was later
discovered that the radio in Iida’s new bomber wasn’t working. No one received
his transmissions. It would not be until Iida returned to Hiry in the early
afternoon that Yamaguchi would finally have confirmation that the American
order of battle included two separate task forces, with perhaps as many as three
carriers.

Nagumo’s launch pulled alongside Nagara at 1127. The admiral scrambled up a

Jacob’s ladder dropped over the side of the cruiser and onto her linoleum-
covered decks. RADM Kimura Susumu, commander of Destroyer Squadron 10,
received the admiral and his staff on the quarterdeck. Upon boarding the cruiser,
Nagumo’s first thought was to use Nagara to tow Akagi clear of the battle.
Kimura, gazing on the panorama of the enormous blazing ship, greeted the
suggestion with scant enthusiasm. He politely pointed out to his superior that
given Akagi’s current circumstances such an operation would prove “difficult”–
an understatement indeed.5
Meanwhile, on Nagara’s bridge, Kusaka was hunting around for a flag for
Kid Butai’s commander. Nagara wasn’t accustomed to hosting such visitors,
and Kimura’s flag locker was devoid of the proper pennant for a vice admiral–a
rising sun flag with a broad red stripe bordering the top edge. Kusaka resorted to
the expedient of taking Kimura’s rear admiral pennant, which had red stripes on
both top and bottom, and simply tearing the bottom stripe off. In the words of
one historian, “The effect was tattered, but certainly no worse than the fleet.”6
Nagumo probably could not have cared less, as his mind was already on
bigger game. In the midst of receiving Kimura’s deferential disinclination to tow
Akagi clear, Nagumo had been handed a message that caused him to focus on
other matters. It was Chikuma No. 5’s 1110 sighting report. Whereas a ninety-
mile separation from the enemy might have given Yamaguchi pause, it was the
best news Nagumo had received in hours. It apparently meant that the enemy
had continued to close with his position, and along the same bearing. If this was
true, with a bit of luck it might be possible to engage the Americans in a daylight
surface action. To a man like Nagumo, this was an enticing prospect. A former
torpedo officer, he knew what his surface forces could do to the enemy given the
chance. Thus, far from moping about on Nagara, Nagumo shortly thereafter
decisively reassumed command of the battle and tried to take the fight to the
enemy.
For his part, since assuming a brevet command at 1050, Admiral Abe had
been casting about for the best response to the situation. He had already notified
Yamamoto and Kondo of the tragedy that had befallen Kid Butai. But what best
to do with the forces remaining? He had heard nothing from Nagumo and was
probably beginning to fear the worst. At 1127 Abe tried to raise Nagumo
directly, asking Akagi “Is your radio working?”7 The lack of reply was its own
answer. Abe–with Chikuma No. 5’s recent sighting report in his hands as well–
decided there was only one thing he could do, and that was attack the
approaching enemy. At 1130 his flagship blinkered Chikuma: “Prepare for
Torpedo Action.” However, scarcely had he signaled Chikuma than the radio
crackled with a hail from Admiral Kimura on Nagara, informing him that
Nagumo had transferred his flag.8
To Abe’s unspoken question of whether Nagumo was injured or capable of
command came an immediate answer, as Nagumo shortly fired off a full update
to Yamamoto, Kondo, and all commands: “Akagi, Kaga, and S ry sustained
considerable damage as a result of enemy bombing attack at about 1030. Fires
have broken out aboard them, and they are unable to participate in any
operations. I (CinC First Air Fleet) have transferred to the Nagara. After
attacking the enemy, I plan to lead my forces to the north. Grid position: HE I A
00.”
Thereafter, the Mobile Fleet’s new flagship began drawing away from the
blazing Akagi. It was a poignant and symbolic moment. Proud Akagi had been
Nagumo’s home for fourteen months, since the formation of First Air Fleet.
Those months had been heady ones for Kid Butai. Now Nagumo would have to
win or lose without her, with just a single carrier, two battleships, three cruisers,
and five destroyers.
Despite this daunting prospect, Nagumo’s reaction was aggressive. He was
clearly focused on returning at least some of the punishment he had just taken.
Hiry ’s counterattack should soon reach the enemy, with a second to follow. All
that remained was for the surface ships to find an opening to contribute as well.
Nagara continued accelerating, her bow cutting the water purposefully as
Nagumo closed to rejoin the remainder of his fleet. Within ten minutes of
leaving Akagi behind, he was back in blinker range of Abe on Tone. Having
heard Nagumo’s report to Combined Fleet at 1130, Abe anticipated matters and
blinkered Nagumo at 1143: “[I] have a part of CruDiv 8, BatDiv 3, and DesRon
10 prepared to go to the attack of the enemy.” Nagumo shortly blinkered back to
Abe, “Hold up.”9 Eager as he was to close the enemy, he didn’t want Nagara
bringing up the rear. He would lead this counterattack in person. First, though,
he needed to reform his scattered ships into some sort of battle formation.
As Nagara closed with the main gaggle of the Mobile Fleet, Yamaguchi
also became involved. Hearing the radioed plans for attack, at 1147 CarDiv 2’s
commander countermanded his previous instruction regarding the screen for the
damaged carriers. He radioed Tone, Akagi, Kaga, and S ry , instructing them to
“Leave one destroyer with the damaged carriers, and have the others proceed on
the course of attack.” If there was to be a surface battle, Yamaguchi wanted all
the offensive power that could be mustered. In the event, though, it appears that
this message may have been garbled or simply ignored, as two destroyers were
with each burning carrier from this time forward. Isokaze and Hamakazee stood
by S ry , Nowaki and Arashi stuck close to Akagi, and Hagikaze and Maikaze
sadly circled Kaga.10
If he had any objections to Yamaguchi’s interjection, Nagumo gave no
sign. Over the following minutes, he sent out orders informing his units that they
should assemble, as he planned to “take to the attack now.”11 Just before noon,
he amplified his instructions, ordering his formation to “form in order of DesRon
10, CruDiv 8, and BatDiv 3. Course 170 degrees, speed 12 knots.” Shortly
thereafter, Nagara came bounding up from the south, as the two battlewagons
and Abe’s sleek cruisers turned to meet her. The sense of excitement within the
Mobile Fleet was palpable. Nagumo’s strategy was a simple one: he would head
nearly straight for the enemy on a reciprocal bearing. Under the cover of Hiry ’s
strike waves, he would close to within gun and torpedo range. As if to further
spur such hopes, word from Vice Admiral Kondo’s 2nd Fleet arrived at noon:
“[We are] in position YU MI KU 00 at 1200. Course 50 degrees, speed 28 knots.
We are heading for the Mobile Force.” With reinforcements on the way,
Nagumo set off on his quest.
Thus, the common interpretation that Yamaguchi was essentially running
the battle from Hiry , with Nagumo in Nagara tagging along behind his
subordinate, is not true. In fact, Yamaguchi and Hiry trailed in Nagumo’s wake,
while his superior led his remaining heavy forces east, seeking battle. And while
Yamaguchi essentially operated independently as far as air operations were
concerned, his general course took its lead from Nagumo’s own movements and
were no more aggressive than those of his commander.
Knowing what we know today, the very notion of Nagumo’s charging an
enemy who had just devastated the mightiest carrier force in the world seems
laughable. For his part, Nagumo certainly knew that he was engaged in a long
shot. But his actions show that at midday on 4 June, making some kind of
retaliation that would allow Kondo and Yamamoto time to enter the battle was
absolutely foremost in his mind. Nagumo was acting promptly to seize what he
felt was his only remaining chance in the battle. Escape was not part of his
agenda, at least not yet. It cannot be ruled out, of course, that he was
subconsciously seeking death in battle to atone for the debacle. But whatever the
motivation, the picture that emerges is not one of a broken admiral, but rather a
man desperately striving to make good on a decidedly grim situation.
His decision to attack in this manner was also supported by the “facts” that
he had at hand, which suggested that the enemy lay only ninety miles distant. He
first had to assemble his dispersed vessels. But as soon as he had done so, he
shaped a course designed to bring him straight at the American’s supposed
position. If they could bridge the gap, an hour’s gunnery from the battlewagons
would be all it took to settle accounts. Not only that, but nightfall was coming,
and with it the promise of reinforcement by Kondo’s forces. Even if Kid Butai
could just locate the enemy in the coming darkness, Kondo might be able to
finish the job.
It was true that Nagumo was down to just one carrier. But Hiry ’s own
planes were even then counterattacking, which might even the odds a bit. And
what is also often overlooked is that the Japanese were well aware of the brutal
losses they had inflicted on the American’s torpedo squadrons. Without torpedo
planes, the enemy would have a much harder time sinking Nagumo’s battleships,
which could more easily shrug off hits from the Dauntlesses. Given that, it was
not unreasonable to suppose that Haruna and Kirishima, as well as CruDiv 8–
with their high speed and deadly torpedoes–might survive air attack long enough
to close the range. This was especially true if Hiry ’s aircraft managed to cripple
one of the enemy carriers.
Nagumo’s naval culture surely exerted an influence on his behavior in this
regard. Nagumo was conscious of the fact that Admiral Inoue had suffered
considerable censure in the aftermath of the Battle of Coral Sea in the eyes of
Combined Fleet’s staff for allowing the loss of carrier Shoho, and the crippling
of Sh kaku, to lead him to “prematurely” abandon his enterprise. Nagumo’s
eagerness to launch a surface attack perhaps derived from a desire to not repeat
such a “hasty” cessation of maximum effort. It must be recalled, too, that at this
time only S ry had been definitively written off. It was not yet clear that Kaga
and Akagi would not be saved and brought back into the battle.
Finally, it must be admitted that in behaving as he did, Nagumo was
conforming to Japanese societal norms as well, which value the integrity of an
act more than its likely results. In Japanese culture, there is a readier acceptance
of the “nobility of failure” while giving it one’s best effort. One of the most
popular Japanese exhortations is “ganbatte,” which translates roughly to “Please
continue trying to do your best.” This principle applies equally when the task in
question is difficult, odious, or even doomed. Winning is optional; trying your
best is not. Likewise, performing in an honorable fashion today is more
important than the long-term implications for tomorrow. This attitude is part of
the enduring fascination of Japan’s Navy, because it is so alien to Western
modes of thinking. Taken together, it’s somewhat easier to see why Nagumo
believed at midday that, while the battle was desperate, it was not yet hopeless.
However, despite his understandable desire to take the battle to the enemy,
both Nagumo and Yamaguchi would have done well to ponder the dangers Hiry
found herself in, especially given that the American carrier force was as yet
undamaged. While the apparent proximity of the Americans was good news for
Nagumo, it was quite the opposite for Yamaguchi’s lone remaining carrier. Both
Nagumo and Yamaguchi should have been concerned with keeping some
distance between her and the more powerful American carriers. Instead, Hiry ,
almost by default, continued closing with the enemy. There was no need to do
this–even had Hiry moved northwest, her aircraft had all the range they needed
to strike back, and then some. Hitting back at the enemy made good sense.
Needlessly exposing Hiry to long odds did not. At this juncture in the battle, the
principle of calculated risk that informed Chester Nimitz’s strategy of “strong
attritional tactics” was eminently suited to the Japanese position as well.
Indeed, a careful assessment of the odds against Hiry would have revealed
two things. First, immediately before Kobayashi’s launching, Yamaguchi had
exactly thirty-seven aircraft of all types left on board her–ten Zeros, eighteen
dive-bombers, and nine carrier attack planes. Another twenty-seven CAP
fighters were still aloft, most of them refugees from the other three carriers, for a
total of sixty-four Japanese carrier aircraft of all types left in operation.12 In
other words, Kid Butai’s airpower was down to about a quarter of what it had
been at 0430. In terms of strike aircraft, the tally was even worse. Hiry ’s
torpedo squadron had, for all intents and purposes, been wrecked already. This
notched down the number of strike planes available to Kid Butai to under a fifth
of the morning’s total.
Second, the nature of the morning’s battle should have given Yamaguchi
and Nagumo fair warning that they were most likely now badly outnumbered.
The incessant American attacks had involved large numbers of aircraft, many of
which were carrier types. It should have been apparent that the dive-bomber
attack at 1020-1025 could not have been launched by a single American flight
deck.13 Japanese aerial attack doctrine was the same as that of the Americans on
this point–committing a full attack squadron per enemy carrier in order to assure
its destruction. The mere fact that three Japanese flattops had been attacked
simultaneously argued strongly that the Americans had at least two carriers in
the fight. Attacking such a powerful force was dangerous in the extreme,
especially given the state of Japanese reconnaissance and their generally
depleted airpower.
Notwithstanding the advisability of attempting a surface attack against the
Americans, there was no reason to drag Hiry into such a brawl if it could be
helped. Both Nagumo and Yamaguchi knew that Kondo’s Invasion Support
Force was the nearest substantial Japanese formation to them. But they also
knew that Kondo offered little in the way of immediate succor to the First
Carrier Strike Force, having no airpower of its own. The other major force in the
neighborhood, of course, was the Main Body. Bringing up the rear some 300
miles behind Nagumo, Yamamoto and his big guns could not hope to be in the
battle for another day at least. Plus, there was little in the way of organic
airpower in Yamamoto’s force, either. Light carrier Hosho provided a bare
minimum of air cover over the Main Body, but was in no way a power-
projection asset. Without aircraft to defend the battleship force, even the mighty
Yamato would find herself in peril. The truth was that while the Main Body
could potentially destroy an enemy surface force already brought to bay, it had
neither the speed to overhaul the swift American carriers should they wish to
avoid battle, nor the means to defend itself against the Americans if they retained
air superiority. The same was true of Kondo’s force as well.
If new airpower was to be scraped together, it would have to come from the
Second Carrier Striking Force, centered on Juny and Ry j . While neither of
these carriers was the cream of the fleet, between them they could at least field
about sixty aircraft, which was a credible number at this point in the battle. Yet,
while the First Carrier Strike Force was burning off of Midway, Dai-Ni Kido
Butai was more than 1,600 miles to the north, involved in reducing Dutch
Harbor’s defenses. They wouldn’t be able to rendezvous with Nagumo for
several days at least. Even if they could do so, it would still be vital to preserve
Hiry and her polyglot air group. If nothing else, having the ability to put her
thirty-seven Zeros over the Main Body would increase the odds of Yamamoto
being able to bring the fleet’s big guns to bear.
 Given all this, Yamaguchi, and Nagumo in particular, needed to judge the
situation very carefully. Since Hiry was almost certainly outnumbered by her
opponents, it was unlikely that she would be able to alter the tide of battle by
herself. There would come a time, probably not far in the future, when CarDiv
2’s flagship would no longer be capable of projecting a meaningful amount of
firepower against the enemy. When that time came, the logical course of action
would be to preserve her for future operations. As a result, the Japanese needed
to fight smart. If they were to extricate Hiry from this mess, she needed to be
positioned at the limits of the enemy’s range, so she could withdraw promptly
when the time came.
This course of action, if it even occurred to Nagumo or Yamaguchi,
apparently did not recommend itself. Their natural inclination was to fight, and
fighting meant attacking. However, their manner of assault meant that they were
essentially driving a wasting asset right into the enemy’s maw. In truth, both
admirals were somewhat to blame in this matter. Nagumo certainly seems to
have neglected issuing any direct orders regarding Hiry ’s disposition, letting
Yamaguchi handle her affairs directly. It’s easy to believe that during this time
of supreme crisis, Nagumo had largely reverted to his torpedo commander ways.
He was focusing almost solely on the surface battle he was trying to create,
rather on overseeing the fate of what was arguably still the single most important
vessel in the Japanese force.
There is no indication that Yamaguchi gave any heed to this matter, either.
Granted, in the absence of direct orders to the contrary, Yamaguchi was
essentially constrained to follow Nagumo’s general lead. But there is no
evidence to suggest that he went down this path unwillingly. We know enough
about Yamaguchi’s character to believe that if the commander of CarDiv 2 had
had reservations, he would have voiced them. We know, too, that Yamaguchi
had been encouraged by Ugaki in times past to take such license if he felt he
needed to. Ugaki had worried before the battle that First Air Fleet, under
Nagumo’s tepid leadership might not be able to “accomplish its mission in future
sea operations in which every kind of change must be expected to happen.”14
And yet here, at a point in time in which Ugaki’s favorite commander might
have improvised a little, Yamaguchi stuck rigidly to a heroic script. In so doing,
he would lead his remaining carrier to ruin precisely because of his
unwillingness to adapt to changing circumstances, a failing that Ugaki had
ironically pinned on Nagumo.
Much as with Nagumo’s decision to close the enemy and fight on the
surface, one can argue that Yamaguchi, too, was simply fighting according to his
societal norms. But this is still unsatisfying. Later in the war, when Japan’s
defeat was both assured and readily apparent to all parties concerned, acts of
folly and despair on the part of the Japanese would be more understandable. But
this was June 4, 1942, and less than an hour ago Japan was doing well in both
the battle and the war. Even now, with the situation in tatters, there were still
things worth fighting for besides mere honor. Yamaguchi’s attitudes and
behaviors ought to have reflected these current realities.
Both Nagumo and Yamaguchi needed to take a broader view on their role
in the war, and that of Kid Butai. If Japan was to fight effectively,
aggressiveness had to be tempered with savvy. Great risks would have to be
taken, but the preservation of precious war-fighting capital–ships, people,
initiative, and time–needed to be at least as important as simple belligerence. In
Yamaguchi’s hands were entrusted irreplaceable assets. His position carried with
it a moral responsibility to the Japanese nation to fight in such a way as to make
the best use of those assets. To this day, Yamaguchi, much more than Nagumo,
receives the admiration of the Japanese people, because he fought with his heart.
But against this must be set the ultimate condemnation of military performance:
he didn’t use his head. Nor did Nagumo.
This is not to say that either admiral was unintelligent–that clearly wasn’t
the problem. Yet, it is equally clear that their approach to warfare was mono-
dimensional and limited to a sphere of combat that was primarily tactical,
personal, and visual. Neither man was capable of placing his tactical decisions
within the larger context of the nation’s war-waging. Yet even now, with the
odds against them, they still had the very real possibility of extracting some
measure of revenge while simultaneously preserving Hiry for future battles.
And no matter whose societal math you used–Oriental or Occidental–bringing at
least one of Kid Butai’s carriers home was a damned sight better than losing all
four. Given all this, as soon as Kobayashi’s attack was in the air, Hiry ought to
have “poured on the coal” and headed northwest at her best speed. Instead, both
Nagumo and Yamaguchi failed to recast their current plans in the face of the
enemy’s new advantage. In so doing, they jointly signed the warrant for the
complete annihilation of Kid Butai’s carriers.

If the remnants of Kid Butai were now sailing straight for disaster, the
Americans, for their part, were not in the best shape to take advantage of
Japanese misfortunes. The U.S. Navy had landed a crushing blow on its enemy,
but the cost had been high. The saga of Hornet’s air group is particularly pitiable
in this respect, because almost all of its woes were self-inflicted. The exact tale
of what happened to Hornets strike remains shrouded in mystery to this day, but
the outlines of the situation were apparently as follows.15 Once John Waldron
and VT-8 had left the formation at 0825, Commander Stanhope Ring continued
leading his group west. However, as the minutes ticked by, no sign of the
Japanese fleet had been forthcoming, because Kid Butai was well south of the
Americans. By around 0900, the situation was getting serious; many of the
aircraft were beginning to run low on fuel. The Wildcats, having been up the
longest, were the first to reach the point of literally no return, and at 0915
(without communicating to Ring) they turned for home. However, the fighter
pilots had no clear idea of where home was. Worse yet, while they had radio
homing devices (known as “Zed Baker”) to detect signals from Hornet, they
were notoriously cranky to use. The fighters were deliberately shedding altitude
at a gradual rate, trading height for a bit of enhanced speed without having to
burn any more gas. The downside of this tradeoff was that the lower they got,
the harder it would be to stay above the visual horizon line to Hornet (wherever
she was). The Zed Bakers required a clear line to the mother ship in order to
work. Worse was the fact that even though some of the pilots did receive the
signal, many of them didn’t understand how to use their equipment well enough
to home on it.16
The result was that none of VF-8’s pilots were able to get a good lock on
their ship. They continued blindly southeastward, searching the horizon in
increasing desperation. At around 1000, one pilot sighted ship wakes far to the
north, but they were deemed to be those of Kido Butai.17 None of the men
wanted to risk ditching next to the Japanese fleet and being captured. As it
developed, the wakes were those of TF 16. And instead of heading for home,
VF-8’s aviators were now proceeding into the trackless wastes of the Pacific.
After missing TF 16, the outcome was inevitable. One by one, starting at around
1015, they began running out of fuel and ditching individually or in small
groups. By 1050 the last of them had gone in the drink. Most of the men were
destined to be picked up later by PBYs, but one was killed while ditching, and
another crawled into his rubber life raft and disappeared, never to be seen again.
Meanwhile, Ring and Hornets SBDs had held course westward. Just five
minutes after the fighters peeled off, at 0920, the SBDs received Waldron’s
announcement that he was under attack by enemy fighters.18 VB-8’s
commander, Lt. Cdr. Robert R. Johnson, realized now that Waldron had been
right all along. Pulling out his plotting board, he drew a 135-degree radial out
from Midway and calculated where the Japanese fleet should be along that line.
Accordingly, he shortly thereafter turned his seventeen SBDs left to a southeast
heading to find the enemy carriers. However, he knew nothing of Nagumo’s
eastward movements during its recovery operations. As a result, Johnson was
too far west in his reckonings. During his fifty-mile jog southeast, he spotted
nothing. Things were now getting critical in the fuel department, and Johnson
accordingly began taking his flight back to a northeast heading to close on where
he hoped Hornet would be.
It was at this juncture that VB-8 encountered an American PBY, which
blinkered them a course heading to Midway. Meanwhile, though, Johnson’s
highly respected executive officer, Lt. Alfred B. Tucker III, had just started
picking up the Zed Baker signal from Hornet. It was now crunch time. Tucker
decided to follow the Zed Baker signal, and his two wingmen followed him.
Johnson, either not trusting the equipment or unsure that he could make the ship,
opted for Midway with his fourteen remaining aircraft. Turning back to the
southeast, they left Tucker to make his way back to the ship. Along the way, one
of Johnson’s planes suffered a catastrophic engine failure, leaving him to ditch
150 miles out. Two more ran out of gas just short of the island. The remaining
eleven planes were greeted with antiaircraft fire from the island’s Marine
defenders, which damaged three aircraft. However, they managed to make their
identities known and landed on Eastern Island at around 1135.

15-1: The travails of Hornet’s morning morning strike. Adapted from
Lundstrom.

 Johnson’s departure at 0920 had left Stanhope Ring alone with Hornet’s
scouting squadron. Ring immediately sent his wingman over to VS-8 to inform
its commander, Lt. Cdr. Walter F. Rodee, that he was to continue following
Ring. Rodee did as he was told until about 0940, but by then his fuel situation
had reached the point where he had to break off for home. Rodee turned back to
the east, and Ring’s wingman went with him, leaving the air group commander
on his own. He proceeded a bit farther and then turned around for the ship at
high speed, overhauling VS-8 and arriving at Hornet at around 1118. Rodee and
VS-8 set down shortly thereafter, followed by Tucker’s detachment of three VS-
8 aircraft at 1145.19
The net result was that Hornet’s air group had been gutted for absolutely no
gain. Though no one on the American carriers realized it yet, VT-8 had been
completely destroyed. Over a third of Hornet’s fighters were gone as well. A
further third of the dive-bombers had ended up at Midway, where they were at
least safe, but where they could not be used for carrier operations until they
made it back to their ship. The remainder were on Hornet. But for the initiative
of Waldron, none of Ring’s group would have so much as sighted an enemy
ship, let alone attacked one. And while Waldron had at least succeeded in
bringing his force to battle, the truth was that he and his men had been
slaughtered to little purpose. Ring’s mission had been an outright disaster: he
had compiled a 50 percent attrition rate and delivered zero in the way of combat
results.
Enterprise fared better, though her losses were serious as well. VT-6 had
been decimated. Only five of its aircraft survived their encounter with the
Japanese CAP, and one of these didn’t make it home. Another was so shot up
that, after landing, it was judged to be useless. This left just three serviceable
torpedo planes on board Enterprise. The dive-bombers fared poorly as well.
Many had been damaged during their attack on Kid Butai, and several ditched
almost immediately afterward as a result. Having detoured far to the southwest
before successfully locating the Japanese fleet, they had all been low on fuel
even before the attack. After attacking, many of the SBD pilots correctly judged
that they couldn’t make the climb back up to altitude. This meant that their Zed
Bakers had more difficulty in picking up their signals, although in many cases
the problem was simply one of not having sufficient gas to make it back even if
a homing signal had been detected. Damaged aircraft, wounded crewmen, and a
rapidly worsening fuel situation compounded their navigational challenges still
further. Not only that, but after the departure of the strike groups, Enterprise had
been forced to unexpectedly maneuver to the southeast to put up additional CAP
fighters. As a result, she couldn’t possibly reach the location where the strike
fliers thought she ought to be before they had to ditch.20
The result was something of a repeat of Hornet’s tragic VF-8 fiasco. Many
of Enterprise’s dive-bombers returned to what they thought would be Point
Option, only to find the open ocean. One by one, they went into the drink. Many
were subsequently picked up by American PBYs or naval vessels, some after
having drifted for days. Inevitably, however, a grim percentage of these men–
including the crews of a group of four aircraft under Lt. Charles R. Ware of VS-
6–were simply swallowed up by the impersonal vastness of the Pacific and never
seen again.21 When all was said and done, between combat losses, ditchings, and
aircraft damaged beyond repair, Enterprise lost twenty-one dive-bombers,
although the final tally did not become clear until the early afternoon.
Yorktown had perhaps been rewarded for her superior deck operations, or
simply had been a little luckier. VT-3 had suffered cruelly and finished the
morning down a dozen aircraft, including those that were too badly damaged to
make it back home after their attack. But Max Leslie’s Bombing Three returned
to Yorktown without incident, though Leslie and another pilot would be forced to
ditch because of fuel exhaustion before being recovered.22
Thus, the total tally of American aircraft lost on the morning strike was
seventy–twelve fighters, twenty-one dive-bombers, and thirty-seven torpedo
aircraft.23 This represented about a 40 percent casualty rate in terms of the
aircraft launched. The final tally of aviators lost was (thankfully) lower than this,
as many were eventually rescued. But until the remaining aircraft were
recovered and reorganized, the only readily available reserve force that could be
considered a cohesive unit were the seventeen operational SBDs of Yorktowns
VS-5.24 In total, the three American carriers between them scarcely mounted a
single full air group (excluding fighters–whose casualties had been somewhat
lighter) at this point.
Ten of VS-5’s aircraft were currently spotted on Yorktowns flight deck,
along with a dozen CAP fighters. The SBDs were awaiting word to take off on a
new scouting mission. Frank Jack Fletcher’s knowledge of the Japanese fleet
was still thin at this point. His latest information had been forwarded to him by
Raymond Spruance at 1115–the 1000 sighting report from Gray’s fighters.25
Fletcher had also received a communication from one of Max Leslie’s pilots at
1115 as VB-3 began landing, indicating that VB-3 had sunk an enemy carrier.
This was splendid news, as far as it went. But Fletcher had been warned that the
Japanese could be operating in two groups. If Gray had sighted only two enemy
flattops, and Leslie’s group had sunk one, that could mean that another pair
lurked somewhere nearby. Accordingly, Fletcher judged that prudence dictated
launching another reconnaissance mission to search the sea to his northwest out
to a distance of 200 miles. He began launching these aircraft at 1133, and by
1150 both the SBDs and the new CAP Wildcats were aloft.
Even had Yamaguchi known of the terrible losses that the Americans had
suffered, it should not have given him much comfort. For as bad as American
casualties were, they retained two important advantages. First, once they
reorganized their air groups, they would still have more than sixty dive-
bombers.26 In terms of raw ship-killing firepower, this represented more than
quadruple what the Japanese could muster. Second, the Americans had three
flight decks from which to operate. While this had created problems in
coordination (and would do so again this afternoon), it also provided the
Americans with a precious measure of redundancy. Having spare decks meant
that they could suffer one of their ships rendered inoperable and still be able to
find homes for any aircraft still aloft. On the Japanese side, of course, losing
Hiry meant losing the battle, period. These crucial advantages would become
telling later in the afternoon.

Meanwhile, another battle was taking place on board the carriers Nagumo had
left behind. This, too, was going badly for the Japanese. After Nagumo’s launch
had left Akagi, Captain Aoki had returned to the task at hand. Having been
driven from the bridge, he and his officers congregated on the forward end of the
flight deck for some time. At 1130 he ordered the ship’s air personnel, along
with Akagi’s wounded, to be transferred to Nowaki and Arashi. Then, at 1135
Akagi suffered a very large explosion in her hangar. This caused flames to
worsen on the flight deck, which drove Aoki below to the anchor deck from
which Nagumo had so recently departed. It was here that he would exercise
command for the remainder of the day and much of the coming night.
In many of the accounts of the battle, the situations on board the carriers at
this time are described as being remarkably similar. Yet, in fact, Akagi was to
wage a very different struggle than Kaga or S ry . By 1140 S ry had been
written off for the better part of an hour, with most of her crew already having
gone into the water. Kaga’s fires were utterly out of control, although many men
were still on board her. In contrast, the struggle to contain the blaze on Akagi
developed into a grudging battle of attrition that lasted more than nine hours.
Her anchor deck was the heart of the resistance to the fires. The senior
officers were all here, including her damage-control chief, Commander Dobashi.
Perhaps to summon up the proper samurai spirit, Dobashi had girded himself for
the tasks ahead by strapping on his officer’s sword.27 The medical staff, too, set
up shop as best they could. However, with the bulk of their supplies left behind
in the bowels of the ship, there was little they could do to treat the walking
wounded who were now making their way forward.
The curving forward bulkhead of the hangar decks loomed over the bow
like a cliff, ascending until it met the underside of the flight deck, some thirty-
five feet overhead. Up this bulkhead mounted a stairway. Two flights of fifteen
steps apiece led to hatches that gave access to the lower and upper hangars. Up
these steel steps now trudged groups of men, members of the damage-control
parties. One by one, they disappeared through the blackened doors into the
canyons of fire beyond. Many of them would never return.
Dobashi and Chief Engineer Tampo had several daunting tasks confronting
them. One was to fight the fires. The second was to ensure that the aft magazines
had been successfully flooded. The third was to get crews back into the
engineering spaces to assess whether Akagi could be made operational again. If
they could at least get her moving, she might have a chance. Of the three
Japanese carriers damaged thus far, she alone had at least some marginal hope of
being saved. Saved, that is, if her wounds could be tended promptly, and if the
right equipment was available. Indeed, had she been one of the newer American
carriers, it’s likely that she would have been saved, even if rendered hors de
combat for months afterward. Unfortunately, Japanese damage-control practice
was not equal to the task set before it this morning.
While a detailed comparative study of Japanese and American damage-
control practices is beyond the scope of this work, some pertinent points can
quickly be made. First, the total number of damage-control personnel on board a
Japanese vessel was drastically lower than on a comparable U.S. warship.
Whereas in 1942 a U.S. carrier could effectively number almost every one of its
nonaviation staff as being able to contribute to damage-control efforts in some
capacity, a Japanese carrier might only have between 350 and 400 men trained
out of a crew of 1,500–2,000.28
Second, the Japanese Navy took far fewer precautions to preserve the
damage-control capacity of its ships–both physical and human–than was
prudent. The Japanese recognized the worth of distributing damage-control
capability within a warship to prevent a single hit from destroying a significant
percentage of that capability. However, they did not apparently copy the
Americans’ obsession with creating redundant backup systems. For example,
they did not design their fire mains such that they could be divided into
independent segments. Nor did they bother dispersing and protecting the
damage-control parties throughout the ship. Official 1944 USN doctrine went so
far as to direct damage-control personnel to lie flat on the deck during a surface
action so as to avoid taking unnecessary fragmentation casualties from gun hits.
One can scarcely see the Japanese, with such a fatalistic approach to the
expenditure of their own human capital, even conceiving of such measures.
Third, the Japanese had nowhere near the specialized equipment the U.S.
Navy used for fighting fires. Their emergency breathing gear was crude, and
they had nothing like the ubiquitous “handy billy” portable gasoline-powered
pumps, or portable generators, of the U.S. Navy. While portable pumps could
not replace the ship’s main pumps, they could buy time for damage-control
teams to repair those primary systems and get them back into action. The
Japanese did not introduce a similar device until 1944, and even then produced
only a limited number per ship. Such emergency capacity as was available on
their ships came from large, fixed emergency generators, or from manual pumps.
The final factor was Japanese damage-control practice appeared not to have
nearly the same degree of systemization as that of the Americans.29 This is
graphically demonstrated by the topic of flooding control. The Japanese were
very concerned with flooding and installed elaborate pumping and
counterflooding mechanisms on their larger warships. Japanese damage-control
centers contained pegboards showing pipelines, valves, and pumps, as well as
the major tanks and voids, in order to control flooding. Yet even in this, the
Imperial Navy’s proficiency paled in comparison to its American rival. For
instance, the Japanese apparently had no standardized closure conditions such as
the USN’s “X-Ray,” “Yoke,” and “Zebra” (which described a hierarchy of how
pipe valves, hatch covers, and other openings within the ship should be secured
depending on the steaming condition and battle readiness of the vessel). The
Americans prepared extensive catalogs (“bills”) of all valves, hatches,
ventilators, drains, and other equipment that might factor into the equation. They
also mapped the quickest routes to potential damage points while taking into
account those hatches that would be closed under battle conditions. In sum, the
impression one gets is that the Japanese did not approach the problem in the
sense of a warship being a collection of interrelated systems, each of which
could affect the others.30 As an American commentator scathingly remarked
about Japanese techniques, “damage control, as it is understood in the U.S.
Navy, did not exist.”31
Kid Butai’s shortcomings in firefighting technique were already apparent
to the men struggling to contain the spreading blaze. By 1100 the fire on Akagi
had become an inferno–making its way forward and consuming every scrap of
inflammable material on the hangar decks in the process. Unfortunately for
Commander Dobashi and his men, large gasoline-powered fires like these were
essentially beyond the ability of World War II firefighting practices to
extinguish. Even the U.S. Navy had concluded grimly that once an avgas fire
“develops into one of major proportions, involving … ten or more planes, it will
continue to burn until all fuel is consumed despite application of water, where
water alone is employed.”32 The best one could really hope for was to ride the
fires out, contain them, cut them off from their fuel, and hope they didn’t destroy
the ship before they burned out.
With an aviation gasoline fire, applying water has only a limited effect,
because the gasoline simply floats on top of the water and continues to burn.
Streams of water can, in some cases, prevent the fire from spreading, but they
won’t extinguish it. And if the crews are not careful, the water can actually slosh
around and spread the burning gasoline over a wider area. Firefighting foam is
much more effective, in that it smothers the blaze by separating it from its
oxygen. But the temptation after foam has been applied is to hose it and the fuel
away as soon as possible with water. This often has unforeseen and evil
consequences. If the ambient temperature of the air or metal decks is still above
the ignition point of the fuel, the application of water and subsequent dissolution
of the foam simply reexposes the fuel to oxygen and can actually cause the fire
to reignite. In Akagi’s case, this problem was probably moot–her foam system
had been rendered ineffective from the outset. All the men had was water, and
precious little of that. It is known that Akagi’s crew managed to rig a large hand
pump on the anchor deck.33 This made her efforts somewhat more effective than
Kaga’s. But without automated pumping capacity, Commander Dobashi was
bound to continue losing ground.

While Akagi’s situation took several hours to deteriorate beyond hope, Kaga’s
situation was already grim. Trapped on the starboard boat deck, her hik ch ,
Commander Amagai, was doing what he could. His selection of command
location was more expedient than well thought-out. Smoke was pouring out of
the ship and sweeping down from the flight deck above, making exercising
control next to impossible. Warrant Officer Morinaga found the hik ch here,
after having had a little adventure of his own in making it to the boat deck.34
Immediately following the large explosion in the hangar, he had found himself
on the AA gallery level just above Amagai’s position. Above him, the flight
deck was completely engulfed in flames. Worse yet, the ladder leading down
was red hot, leaving him trapped. Just below him, though, he could see the ship’s
cutter, still hanging from its davits. Seizing his opportunity, he jumped down on
top of the boat, landing on the canvas cover. From there he was able to lower
himself gingerly to the deck below
 Knocked unconscious by the earlier blasts, aviator Akamatsu Yuji finally
awoke in the deserted ready room, head bleeding, and made his way up to the
flight deck. The steel plates rimming the wooden flight deck were already so hot
that the rubber soles of his shoes melted. From where he was, he could see no
way down except over the edge and straight into the ocean– frighteningly long
drop. Yet, the fires were coming up behind, and eventually Akamatsu had no
choice. He plunged into the ocean, but his life jacket pulled him back up to the
surface. All around him men were swimming, clutching whatever debris they
could find. Eventually, he joined a group of other pilots supporting their injured
squadron leader, Lieutenant Kitajima. After an hour, Akamatsu and his group
were finally picked up by the destroyer Hagikaze.35
Kaga was actually still moving, crawling north at two to three knots. We
know this to be true, because she was being followed by an American
submarine. The long-suffering Nautilus had caught up to what was left of Kid
Butai. After the dive-bomber attack, her skipper, Lt. Cdr. William Brockman,
had seen smoke columns on the horizon and selected the nearest one. Akagi
avoided Brockman’s attentions by virtue of remaining under power for some
time before her rudder failed. Thus, Kaga found herself in a familiar
position–“tail-end Charlie”–but this time in a formation of cripples, and with
Brockman trying to close in. Trouble was, even after an hour’s submerged
movement, Brockman wasn’t gaining. The conclusion was obvious–the big
Japanese flattop was still limping along, even though she was wreathed in
flames.36
On the face of it, this seems somewhat incredible, particularly given how
quickly S ry had been rendered immobile. However, there were a number of
factors that explain her ability to remain underway. First, Kaga had a larger
number of decks between her hangars and the engine spaces, meaning that her
engine room crews were protected for longer before the heat became intolerable.
The fact that she had an armored deck above her vitals helped as well.37 Finally,
she had not taken a freak hit that detonated deep in the ship, as S ry apparently
had. The net result was that at least one of Kaga’s engine rooms must have
remained operative for some time. In the end, of course, it was a feat that would
cost the lives of dozens of her engineers, who stayed at their posts and
performed their duties until the end.

On S ry , the situation had been judged hopeless almost from the get-go.
Captain Yanagimoto’s “Abandon ship” at 1045 had found pilot Mori and the
survivors from the ready room already clustered on the boat deck, one deck
below the bridge.38 The narrow walkway was packed so tight with men that they
had to raise their arms above their heads. Yet, more kept pushing in to escape the
fires on the hangar decks, which were steadily drawing nearer. The sailors
finally resorted to standing on each other’s shoulders in spots.
The cutter on the boat deck seemed an obvious gambit, so somebody made
to lower it, but it stuck in the davits with one end still hanging from above.
Realizing that the cutter was now useless, the men simply started jumping. Mori
was scared–the distance looked too far. It was, in fact, some thirty-five feet–a
comfortable enough sounding leap sitting in the safety of one’s armchair,
decidedly less so when clinging to a steel railing poised above the brink. But as
he watched, Mori began to discern a rhythm to the waves, the long swells
periodically bringing themselves closer to him. Timing his jump carefully, he
jumped clear of the deck and grabbed for one of the lifeboat’s ropes.
Unfortunately for him, the line was no longer attached to anything, and he and
the useless lanyard plummeted into the sea.
Bobbing to the surface, he swam clear of S ry ’s hull. At that very
moment, the cutter above him decided to come hurtling down, fortunately
landing nearby, rather than on top of him. Because of its bizarre entry angle, it
hit the sea upside down. But Mori and some of the other swimmers righted it and
began bailing it out with their footwear. They then began the laborious task of
paddling away from the ship.

On board Akagi, despite the steadily worsening conditions, men were still
fighting the blaze in an organized fashion. But once the fires crept below the
hangars, the situation became much more complex. The sheer number of spaces
in the ship’s innards meant that the fire had that many more places to fester in,
dissipating the efforts of the crew still further. Despite the ever-present danger of
unexploded munitions, it was probably easier to bring hoses into play in the
relatively large space of the hangar decks. Even there, in fact, there probably
wasn’t enough room for more than a score of men to work at any given time.39
But as the fire burned deeper, men would have been forced to battle it in the
twisting, darkened corridors. Deck heights on most Japanese warships were very
cramped by Western standards–no more than six or seven feet. In some cases,
the clearance under the ductwork and other overhead hamper was as little as
five. Firefighting would have to be done in smaller groups, cut off from each
other, with little coordination between them.
The working conditions were nothing short of horrific. The crew hauled
firefighting equipment into the ship’s bowels, eyes watering and throats retching
on the fumes suppurating from the smoldering bulkheads. Their mouths would in
many cases have been covered by a wet rag, sometimes soaked with their own
urine, to filter the worst of the fumes. Despite that, crawling along the decks
would have been obligatory just to be able to breathe. Likewise, they would have
dragged their comrades–shredded by bomb blasts, hideously burned, or choked
by smoke–back out again to the anchor deck. As men in the bowels were
overcome, the survivors on the anchor deck, in many cases already wounded
themselves, would have had to rouse themselves and take their places on the fire
line.
The plight of the engineering crews on all three ships, trapped in the engine
spaces below the waterline, was bleaker still. Engine rooms are hot, unpleasant
places to begin with, and the encroaching fires quickly rendered all of them
nearly uninhabitable. It is hardly surprising that according to the common
wisdom, the engine room crews of Akagi, Kaga, and S ry died to a man, with
only a few escaping from Hiry . However, on closer examination, it appears that
such universal pronouncements are untrue.40 Kaga and S ry ’s engineers, it is
true, died in droves. Two-thirds of Kaga’s were killed, and only a handful would
ultimately survive from S ry ’s. S ry ’s black gang was simply trapped–given
the fewer number of decks between the engine spaces and the hangars, the fire
was on top of them almost immediately, blocking their escape paths. Kaga’s
casualties appear to have been caused by her continued efforts to try and limp
out of the area, which necessarily kept the engineers at their posts even as
conditions deteriorated. Akagi’s engineers, however, fared somewhat better.
Akagi’s official casualty list–267 men–is surprisingly low when compared
to Kaga’s and S ry ’s, especially given the length of her ordeal.
Notwithstanding the loss of mechanics and armorers that must have occurred
from the initial bomb, and the subsequent casualties among the firefighting
crews, such a low loss rate hardly seems believable. Her relative good fortune
was the result of two factors. First, she suffered only a single hit. This meant that
fewer men were killed outright by the initial attack, unlike Kaga and S ry . This
also ensured that Akagi’s fires were more localized and slower to develop into a
general blaze, giving her crew more time to get out of the way. The second
factor, of course, was that Captain Aoki had ordered the engineering spaces
abandoned as soon as Akagi’s steering had failed at 1043. Better still, the
internal communications on board ship were still in good enough shape, at least
initially, that his orders were acted on promptly. This meant that while a portion
of her 303-strong engineering staff eventually did perish, either belowdecks or in
damage-control efforts, nearly two-thirds ultimately survived. This represented a
far better survival rate among Akagi’s engineers than any of the other carriers
would boast this day.
Back on Kaga, Amagai and Morinaga were now crowded with many aviators
and other survivors into a steadily shrinking space that clung like an aerie to the
side of the ship. Behind and above them the fires advanced steadily. Far below
was the sea. Finally, on his own initiative, Amagai told the men to jump for it.
Morinaga peeled off his flight suit and boots. Around them, some of the newer
recruits were protesting that they didn’t know how to swim. Amagai was
adamant–they were dead for sure if they stayed where they were. Morinaga
didn’t wait, but jumped as far out as he could. It was a long way down. Others
followed suit.
One man was going to perish regardless–Lt. Ogawa Shoichi, Kaga’s
kanbaku buntaicho, and a famous veteran of the attack on Pearl Harbor, as well
as the fighting in China. Ogawa had been badly wounded in the initial attack on
Kaga. The long fall to the water would have killed him outright, and his wounds,
he knew, were mortal in any case. Smiling complacently, he urged Amagai to
abandon ship with the other pilots. Finally, Amagai bade him farewell and
jumped into the sea with the last of the aviators. From below in the water, the
men could see Ogawa still. He had crawled to the ship’s railing and was waving
and yelling encouragement to them. Then he lost his final strength and died in
front of their eyes.

Hanging on to his line dangling below S ry ’s bridge, Gunnery Officer Kanao

was unaware of the fact that the ship had been largely abandoned above him. All
he knew was that he couldn’t swim worth a damn and that the lanyard was
literally his lifeline. Grimly, he hung on for what seemed like hours.41 After a
while, one of the sailors swimming nearby noticed his plight and swam up to
him. It turned out to be one of Kanao’s subordinates, a midshipman. He tied the
line around Kanao’s waist.
At first Kanao was grateful, but being secured to a line was something of a
two-edged sword. It assured Kanao’s security, but also tied his motions to those
of the ship. Though the water was calm and shiny (perhaps because of the oil
being spread on it), S ry still rolled appreciably. When she did so, the line
hauled Kanao bodily out of the water and slammed him against her flank. He
quickly became adept at using his legs to cushion the blows, though it hurt. Still,
it was better than drowning.
After a time, Kanao heard someone shouting his name. It was Lieutenant
Commander Asanoumi, S ry ’s navigator, who he had last seen on the bridge.
“Hi, Gunnery Officer!” Asanoumi shouted, “Abandon ship has been
ordered. You must swim away from the ship.”
 “I cannot swim,” Kanao called back. “Please go ahead.”
“I’ll swim then,” Asanoumi said. “Try to fight back, don’t give up!” The
navigator swam on.42
Kanao wondered if perhaps the navigation officer was the last person he
would see in this lifetime.43 Despite the rope, he felt marooned in the middle of
the ocean. He had no control over his fate–he could neither swim away nor
climb back on board the ship. The only thing he could do was to cling to the line
and try to survive the relentless buffeting against S ry ’s hull.
Kanao suddenly saw someone on the bridge, looking out the window. It
was Captain Yanagimoto. His face was scarlet red, and it reminded Kanao of the
fairytale monsters of his childhood. It had a totally calm and relaxed expression,
“like a Buddha,” Kanao remembered later. “Skipper!” he tried to yell, but no
sound came out. The next time he looked up, the face was gone. Other men
apparently saw Yanagimoto as well, standing on the starboard side of the bridge,
exhorting the men in the water. Soon afterward, though, the captain disappeared
into the fires surrounding S ry ’s island. So ended one of Japan’s most beloved
commanders.44
The ship was silent now. Kanao was overwhelmed with sorrow, both at his
own likely fate and that of S ry ’s skipper. Just then, he noticed a ladder
floating closer to him from the direction of the carrier’s stern. Desperate to have
done with the line and his demoralizing suspension, he untied himself, let go,
and splashed toward the ladder. Grabbing it, he simply held on for dear life.
16

Japanese Counterstrikes–1200–1400

On board Hiry , Yamaguchi and his staff were beginning to get edgy. If
Chikuma No. 5’s previous report was correct, the enemy ought to have been
close by. Not only that, but the scout had gone on the air at 1132 so that the
kanbaku buntaich could home in on its signal. Yet, it was now noon,
Kobayashi had been in the air an hour, and no one had as yet received any report
from him.
In fact, unbeknownst to Yamaguchi or his staff, Kobayashi had already sent
two signals back to Hiry , but neither of them was received (or perhaps
decoded) until almost an hour later. As a result, the first intimation that
Yamaguchi received that his force had, in fact, found the enemy did not occur
until 1210. This signal, though, didn’t come from Kobayashi, but from another
anonymous aircraft in the divebomber hik tai. It said simply: “Am bombing
enemy carrier.” After that, silence.
Yamaguchi was in the dark. However, he knew that at least some of his
divebombers were now attacking an enemy carrier. That was good news, as far
as it went. Furthermore, the fact that Kobayashi had managed to reach the enemy
within an hour and ten minutes flight time meant that the Americans were indeed
relatively close. This broadly confirmed Chikuma No. 5’s spotting report.
Yamaguchi took this opportunity to order the fleet’s remaining scout planes put
in readiness. Unfortunately, Chikuma’s No. 4 plane was now the only long-range
scout ready to go. Chikuma No. 1 had been recovered earlier with some sort of
problem, and was down.1 Neither Tone’s No. 1 aircraft, nor Amari’s No. 4 were
ready, either. Kid Butai was beginning to run short of quality scouts. For the
time being, Yamaguchi was simply pressing ahead–preparing Tomonaga’s
follow-up strike (which would be ready within another hour or so) and hoping he
would receive further information from Kobayashi in the meantime.
It would be right to wonder why prepping and spotting Tomonaga’s
sixteen-plane strike was taking so long, given that Yamaguchi originally wanted
to launch at around 1220. After all, Tomonaga’s group had returned to the ship
almost three hours earlier. This delay couldn’t be readily attributed to CAP
operations. Kobayashi had taken off at 1057. Since then, Hiry had landed six
Zeros at 1134, and that was it. The rest of the force’s fighters were staying aloft
for the time being. Hiry s flight deck was wide open for spotting. On the face of
it, it would seem that Tomonaga should have been able to follow Kobayashi’s
group within about an hour and a half of the latter’s launch. Yet apparently this
wasn’t possible.
There are two plausible explanations for what would develop into a two and
a half hour separation between Hiry ’s two counterstrikes. Either the aircraft and
hangar crews were exhausted by the day’s operations, or Yamaguchi was hoping
to locate and confirm a second target and then hit it as well. Either way, Hiry s
operational tempo was slowing to a crawl. Like a drowning man, Kid Butai’s
efforts were becoming feebler and less well coordinated. The crisp
synchronization of the morning’s operations were gone at the very moment that
decisive action was required. Instead, Hiry was fighting raggedly, with an air of
desperation.

A quarter past noon found Nagumo back in control of his fleet, and in effective
communication with all units, including Hiry . His flagship, Nagara, was
leading the surface units of Kid Butai toward the enemy along course 060
degrees. Kond had sent word that his Second Fleet was rushing to reinforce
Nagumo. Though Kond could not arrive till early morning, Nagumo likely
believed that if he could just survive till sunset after engaging the enemy, his
battleships and cruisers could likely take good care of themselves in the darkness
until help arrived to turn the tide.
It was at this juncture, after an hour and a half of silence since receiving
Abe’s 1050 communiqué, that Yamamoto finally made his presence felt. He and
his staff had recovered from their earlier shock and formulated a plan to recover
the situation. Removed from the battlefield, they, even more than Nagumo,
retained an unwarranted optimism that the situation could yet be retrieved. As
Combined Fleet’s staff saw it, the biggest immediate worry was Nagumo’s
deficit in flight decks. When Kond joined Nagumo, he would add light carrier
Zuih to the mix, but that was slender support at best. In a pinch, the ancient H
sh might be committed as well. Finally, there was a slim possibility that either
Akagi or Kaga could be restored to action–no reports of their abandonment had
yet been received by Yamamoto, and he knew that they had been ordered to
withdraw northwest. However, it did not take a tactical genius to see that the
most potent resource for turning the tide of battle unfortunately lay with the two
carriers tied up in the Aleutians Operation. The sooner Kakuta could bring
CarDiv 4 south into the battle, the better. The obvious thing to do was to find a
quick way to reorganize and concentrate as much of this strength as possible,
while simultaneously calling on Kakuta’s carrier force.
The American carriers were not the only problem that would have to be
dealt with if the battle was to be turned around–there was still the question of
Midway’s airpower. The staff believed this threat could be neutralized by gun
power. Kond could detach Kurita’s cruiser squadron to dash ahead and
bombard Midway before dawn. If all went well, the Japanese would only have to
contend with the American carriers come the morning of the 5th, and there was
reason to hope that these would be whittled down in the meantime.
Accordingly, at 1220 Yamamoto sent out a general dispatch to his forces.
First, as expected, the tanker force would withdraw from the Main Body,
whereupon Yamamoto would move south to Nagumo’s aid. The Midway
Invasion Force was to withdraw temporarily to the northwest, while Kond was
to charge northeast toward Kid Butai. Finally, the Second Mobile Striking
Force was to come south. About an hour later, at 1310, he elaborated that Kond
should dispatch a portion of his force to “shell and destroy” the enemy air base
on Midway. At the same time, he “temporarily postponed” the invasion of both
Midway and Kiska.2
Spurred into action, Kid Butai continued preparations for a surface battle.
Nagumo shortly informed his entire force he planned “to destroy the enemy by
daylight action” and that they should “expect to encounter the enemy
momentarily.” This last remark is puzzling, until it is recalled that Nagumo had
assumed that the U.S. forces were presumably still closing his own, and the gap
had supposedly been narrowing for the last two hours. If that was true, then
Nagumo was within his rights to assume that contact would soon be made.
Chikuma and Tone dutifully reported at 1225 and 1229, respectively, that they
had completed preparations for torpedo action.3
It is true that at this point in the battle neither Yamaguchi nor Nagumo had
much concrete information. Yet, despite the earlier fragmentary reports that the
enemy lay within a hundred miles or so, the idea that either the enemy or
Nagumo’s force could somehow magically bridge the physical gap between
them was folly. This could only have occurred if the enemy was interested in a
surface brawl himself. The thought ought to have occurred to the commander of
Kid Butai that his opponents were unlikely to desire this.
The most likely explanation for Nagumo’s reasoning is that he was reverse
projecting his own preferred tactics on those of the enemy. That is to say, the
overall Japanese plan at Midway was built on the concept of the Japanese
carriers whittling down the Americans so that the Main Body could land the
killing blow. Finding himself in a dramatically weakened position, he might
have imagined that the Americans were going to come gunning for him with
their own surface forces. Indeed, his earlier belief that the American forces were
primarily surface oriented may have been coming back to haunt him. Of course,
neither Fletcher nor Spruance had the slightest interest in participating in a
surface battle, either during broad daylight or at night.
Nagumo may also have imagined that Kobayashi’s strike would disable
what he still hoped was just a single American carrier and thus transform the
battle into a pure surface affair. But any staff officer worth his salt could have
told him that the 1020 divebomber attack had to have been the work of more
than one enemy carrier. Given that, and in the complete absence of any hard
information regarding the results of Kobayashi’s attack, Nagumo was clearly
guilty of grasping at straws.
At 1240, however, came an update from Chikuma’s No. 5 search plane that
finally put paid to these illusions. “Sight what appears to be two large enemy
cruisers in position bearing 15 degrees, distance 130 miles from my point of
origin. In addition, I see what appears to be 1 carrier and 1 destroyer. Course
north, speed 20 knots.”4
Nagumo’s face surely fell upon receiving this news, and his subsequent
actions revealed his realization of the full import of the message. The enemy
force appeared to be shearing away north and opening the range. This killed any
immediate hopes of bringing about a surface action. As Nagumo himself put it
later, with a trace of unintentional irony: “From this it became evident that the
enemy was trying to put distance between himself and us.”5 Nagumo thereafter
chose to parallel the enemy’s course and try to remain to the northwest of him.
He would await the developments from Hiry ’s air strikes, the arrival of
reinforcements, and new search reports before taking further action.
Accordingly, at 1245 Nagumo changed course from 060 to due north, speed 20
knots.
At the same moment Nagumo was turning north, an additional snippet
regarding Kobayashi’s attack was finally received by Hiry . One of the
divebombers signaled: “Enemy carrier is burning. I see no friendly planes in
range of visibility. I am homing.” The interesting part of this message was not so
much what it said, but who it came from. Neither Lieutenant Kobayashi, nor his
second in command, Lieutenant Kond , had transmitted it. Instead, it seems
most likely that the message was sent from Ens. Nakayama Shimematsu, who
commanded the lead plane in the 2nd sh tai of Kond ’s 2nd chutai.6
 The fact that the 1245 transmission came from the middle of the 2nd ch
tai’s batting order had to have caused some anxious looks on Hiry ’s bridge.
Nakayama would have let his superiors report first if they had been able to. The
fact that he had transmitted meant that he considered himself the senior survivor
of the squadron. There was only one conclusion that could be reached:
Kobayashi’s attack had been very costly. However, until the divebombers
landed, it would be impossible to gauge what impact they had made.7

Meanwhile, on board Akagi, a rather strange turn of events was taking place. At
1203 the flagship’s engines had suddenly come to life. Slowly, the stricken giant
began moving in a great circle to starboard, her rudder still jammed. To Captain
Aoki, this was all rather mysterious–ships typically don’t just “turn on” of their
own accord. The fact that the engineering spaces had been deliberately
abandoned at 1043 should have meant that the machinery had been secured in
good order as well, making it less believable that Akagi had spontaneously
reengaged her own engines. Thus, despite the Nagumo Report’s characterization
of Akagi’s movement as being “automatic,” it is almost impossible to contrive a
set of circumstances whereby she resumed her circling without human
intervention.
Oddly enough, Commander Tampo had been in the engineering spaces just
fifteen minutes before and was convinced that no one remained alive there. But
in truth, his recent inspection was unlikely to have encompassed the entirety of
the engine rooms, which were vast, dark, and exceedingly hot and smoky. The
riddle needed solving, though, so an engineering ensign named Akiyama was
dispatched forthwith back below.
Making his way down from the anchor deck, Akiyama would have passed
through the officers berthing spaces in the bow, down through the ship’s
machine shops, and finally down another long vertical ladder that led to the
electrical control rooms just forward of Boiler Room No. 1. He now stood on the
lowest deck in the ship, some twenty-five feet below the waterline. Making his
way aft through the pitch black, he might have peered into the boiler control
room located at Frame 94, and then the one located further aft at Frame 108.
Shining his light briefly on the dials and gauges within, Akiyama would have
discovered that Akagi still had some level of steam in her boilers. Even in the
midst of evacuation, there would have been no reason to have bled her steam off,
particularly if it was hoped that power could be restored later.
The engine room controls themselves were located in both the forward and
aft engine rooms. With the fumes growing worse and worse, Akiyama would
have been lucky to have made it into the forward engine room at all. This
compartment was cavernous, with choking vapors adding to the stygian
blackness. Akiyama wouldn’t have been able to see much more than what was
directly in front of his flashlight’s narrow blade of light–silent machinery and
hurried glimpses of his fallen shipmates. But the aft engines were another 150
feet further astern, and the only way to get there was through cramped
passageways that ran under the outboard shaft alleys. Given the horrendous
atmospheric conditions, and finding nothing but corpses in the spaces he
ventured into, it would not have been surprising if Akiyama concluded that
conditions were untenable in the aft engine rooms as well. He couldn’t really
linger. His mission, after all, was to bring information back to Aoki and Tampo,
and he couldn’t very well do that if he was dead. Akiyama returned in short
order to the anchor deck. Everyone in the engine rooms had succumbed, he
reported.
Yet, Akiyama was almost certainly wrong in his estimation. Instead, it
seems likely that there were men in Akagi’s aft engine room about noon, but that
no one on her bow was aware of their actions. At this point, the two extremities
of the ship were completely cut off from each other. Survivors were almost
certainly gathered on the ship’s fantail, many of which would have come up
from the engine spaces via a hatch in the steering room spaces. It is quite
possible that some of these men, perhaps led by some anonymous engineering
lieutenant, went below again in an effort to flood the magazines and perhaps
restore power to the ship.
This speculation is substantiated by the Nagumo Report itself. We know
that Akagis aft magazines were not flooded until about 1300. Given the likely
shock damage in the stern, which had evidently damaged the piping, the only
way these spaces were going to be flooded was manually. If so, then somebody
had to have ventured into the aft machinery spaces to do the deed. Not
coincidentally, this would have put a damage-control party (almost certainly
composed of engineering personnel) directly adjacent to the aft engine rooms. It
would not have been surprising if they somehow managed to get the ship
underway again. Whatever the explanation, Akagi was now moving, although
her stately, blazing procession was ultimately doomed to lead nowhere.
However, her circling wasn’t necessarily all bad. One of the beneficiaries
was Fujita Iyozo, S ry s fighter ace. Having been shot down over Kid Butai
during the torpedo attack on Hiry , he had been drifting in his inflatable life vest
with no way to attract anyone’s attention. All the ships that he could see were on
the horizon. He was still starving hungry, and all in all, things did not look good.
However, to his amazement, he now saw Akagi moving again, and she seemed to
be coming his way. Fujita started swimming.8
 As Akagi moved, so too moved her escorts. Before long, Fujita found that
destroyer Nowaki was heading in his general direction as well. Fujita began
waving frantically. For a minute, it appears that Nowaki mistook him for an
enemy aviator, as she cranked one of her 25-mm machine guns around toward
him. However, at this point fate intervened yet again as both Nowakis navigator
and her executive officer recognized the man in the water–all three of them had
been Etajima classmates.9 Within minutes, strong hands helped Fujita climb to
the destroyer’s deck. In the distance, he could see other boats from Nowaki
rescuing sailors from the burning carrier beyond, but he was too tired to really
take in all the details. Then, after being given food and a dry uniform, the
exhausted flier simply fell asleep where he sat, on Nowaki’s main deck.

At 1300 Yamaguchi finally received more definitive word about what he was up
against, conveyed by Rear Admiral Kimura in Nagara. An American pilot from
Yorktown’s VT-3 had been plucked from the water by Arashi and interrogated,
and from him the Japanese had learned that there was not just one American
carrier present, but three– Yorktown, Enterprise, and Hornet!10 During his
interrogation, the unfortunate prisoner–Ens. Wesley Osmus–divulged that
Yorktown was operating separately from the other two flattops. He also related
the details of the American sortie from Pearl Harbor, when they had reached
Midway, and the composition of the American task forces.
Osmus’s information wasn’t perfect, but it confirmed two important points.
First, the Japanese now knew that they were up against a powerful adversary.
Second, since the American carriers were apparently operating separately, it was
now unclear whether both American task forces had been found yet by the
Japanese. This was shortly confirmed by S ry s D4Y scout. Returning to the
task force and finding Hiry s deck already spotted with torpedo planes, Iida
dropped a message tube, which confirmed that the enemy was operating in two
task forces, containing three carriers, with the second enemy task force located
to the south of the formation Kobayashi had attacked.11
Here, from the mouth of the enemy, and from their own scouts, was
confirmation of the grim odds facing the Japanese. Even presuming that
Kobayashi’s force had inflicted severe damage on one of the American flattops,
Hiry simply didn’t have the strength to face another two. In fact, even
attempting to construct a strategic calculus by means of simplistic math like “one
of our carriers versus two of theirs” was facile, as it didn’t plumb the depths to
which Hiry ’s airpower had sunk. At this juncture, both sides were hurt–nobody
was operating full air groups any longer. Combat strength was now measured by
having both residual airpower and redundant flight decks. However, Hiry s air
group was but a shadow of its former self, and Yamaguchi had only a single
flight deck from which to attack. Had Akagi escaped her doom at the hands of
Dick Best, Yamaguchi’s approach to the battle might have made more sense. But
now, more than ever, the intelligent course of action was for Hiry to break off
the action. Not opening the range to the enemy, even for the forty-five minutes
remaining before Tomonaga would be able to take off, was simply the wrong
thing to do, because it needlessly compounded Hiry ’s risks of detection and
subsequent attack. Yet, the only discernible immediate response to the reports
from the S ry s scout plane and Ens. Osmus’s interrogation was Nagumo
signaling to Tone and Haruna at 1310 that they should launch reconnaissance
aircraft to search between 0 and 90 degrees True to localize the second
American task force.
Figuring out exactly where each of Kid Butai’s constituent components
was at this moment is a complex undertaking, because the Japanese force was
scattered. The heavy units–CruDiv 8 and BatDiv 3–were sticking close to
Nagara, while closing the Americans. As mentioned, though, Nagumo had
subsequently changed course to 0 degrees (at 1245) and would shortly change
course again to 070 degrees at 1322. He was to stay on this heading until he was
finally rejoined by Hiry , which was overhauling him from the south, at 1440.
Hiry s whereabouts are more difficult to determine, as we have no
surviving course chart for her. The evidence indicates that after moving away
from the vicinity of S ry at around 1130, she had operated on a roughly back
and forth course a bit east of the morning’s disaster. Thus, when the likely
courses of the Nagara and Hiry groups are plotted, Hiry ends up to the east
and south of Nagumo’s position after the latter started his noon counterthrust
toward the Americans. Yet, while Hiry was detached from Nagumo, the
evidence suggests that she was still within blinker distance of him, probably
using CruDiv 8 as an intermediary.12 Hence, Yamaguchi was not really out of
touch with Nagumo from the standpoint of command and control. Again, what
all this points to is a rather different picture of Japanese command arrangements
during the hours immediately after the 1020 catastrophe. Instead of tagging
along behind Yamaguchi, Nagumo was attempting to lead from the fore.
Likewise, Yamaguchi, despite his aggressive reputation, was far from closing
the enemy, or even steering northeast, at anything like thirty knots. Instead, we
see hints of a different picture, wherein Hiry was essentially stalking the
enemy, using Nagumo’s forces as something of a shield while conducting her
launches and recoveries. Then, when Nagumo eventually gave up the attempt to
close with the enemy, he chose a course whereby Hiry could rejoin him
relatively quickly.
One imperative the Japanese did have at this juncture was maintaining
contact with the one American carrier they had found. Unfortunately, Petty
Officer Takezaki and Chikuma No. 5 were having a difficult time with this. As a
result, they had been on and off the air during their mission. At 1217 Takezaki,
who had lingered in the area of Kobayashi’s attack, came on the air to report that
he had been pursued by enemy aircraft and had lost contact with the task force.
Three minutes later, though, he signaled that they had reestablished contact with
the Americans. Thereafter, Takezaki’s pilot, PO3c Hara Hisashi,13 had played a
cat and mouse game with the American fighters in the area, ducking into clouds
when threatened. At 1314 Takezaki transmitted that he had sighted an enemy
carrier task force on course 020, making twenty-four knots. Interestingly, he
made no mention of whether the carrier he saw was burning, as Kobayashi’s
squadron had last reported it to be. Yorktown was still dead in the water at this
point in time, so it seems likely that Takezaki was seeing TF 16 instead,
although he didn’t apparently realize it.
Hopefully, the forthcoming scouting launch would help remedy some of
these deficiencies. One benefit of the enemy’s proximity was that it allowed the
Japanese to more usefully employ their shorter-ranged Type 95 spotting planes.
At 1315 Abe had Tone signal his vessels to launch a total of five aircraft. Each
plane was to search to 150 miles, then turn left for an additional thirty miles. The
search lines would be as follows:

Search line No. 1, 90 degrees, Tone.

Search line No. 2, 70 degrees, Tone.
Search line No. 3, 50 degrees, Chikuma.
Search line No. 4, 30 degrees, Haruna.
Search line No. 5, 10 degrees, Kirishima.

However, five minutes later, Haruna blinkered back to report that she had
already launched all three of her aircraft at 1300. Their orders were to fan out
across an arc stretching from 40 degrees westward to 340 degrees. What Abe
thought of his overeager subordinate’s initiative remains a mystery, but as it
transpired one of Haruna’s scout planes was destined to make a later contact
with the Americans. This is odd in itself, in that at this point in the battle, the
Americans were almost due east of Kid Butai, meaning that Haruna’s
northward-aimed fan of aircraft should have encountered nothing but open
ocean. By the same token, whether Kirishima, in fact, ever sent off her own
plane down the 10 degree search line, which should have overlapped one of
Haruna’s birds, remains a mystery.

On board Hiry , preparations for launching the next strike were finally being
completed. By about 1300, ten Type 97 Kank were on deck and beginning to
warm up. Since Yamaguchi’s earlier communiqué to Yamamoto, it had
apparently been decided to send along not three, but six more Zeros for the
mission, led by Lt. Mori Shigeru. Mori, dividing his force into three two-plane
shotai, would lead a grab bag of fighters. One of these was flown by WO
Minegishi Yoshijiro, who had actually been one of Kobayashi’s fighter escorts
earlier in the afternoon. He had come limping back to the ship not long after
Kobayashi’s departure, his plane shot up in a fracas with some American
divebombers. Whatever damage he had suffered must have been fairly minor, as
he was going back up just an hour and a half later.14 He would lead the 2nd
shotai. The 3rd shotai would be headed up by Kaga’s highly experienced PO1c
Yamamoto Akira, flying with another survivor from Kaga’s fighter unit, PO3c
Bando Makoto.
Lieutenant Tomonaga would once again lead the Type 97 hikotai, such as it
was. He opted to split his tiny command into two five-plane chutai, placing
himself at the head of the first. The second would be headed up by Lt.
Hashimoto Toshio, who was normally Tomonaga’s observer/navigator.
However, Tomonaga thought it best to split the two most-senior officers in the
hikotai between the two chutai. As such, Hashimoto would be flying in PO1c
Takahashi Toshio’s plane.
Just then, it was discovered that the repairs made to Tomonaga’s left wing
fuel tank, which had been holed during the morning strike, had been ineffective.
The tank still leaked.15 When lugging a heavy torpedo, a Type 97’s 225-liter
outboard tanks couldn’t be filled in any case, meaning that only Tomonaga’s
starboard 350-liter inboard tank could be fueled.16 He probably wouldn’t have
enough gas to make it home from the mission. Several of the pilots requested
that they take the damaged bird instead. But Tomonaga cheerfully declined,
joking that the Yankees were only ninety miles away and that he could make it
there and back again on just a single tank.17
The pilot briefing was delivered personally by Admiral Yamaguchi. He
encouraged his men to do their utmost–they were truly the last hope for the
force. Knowing that there were three American carriers out there, and that one
had been hit already, it was absolutely imperative that they attack one of the
undamaged American vessels. The men nodded grimly and started making their
way to their waiting aircraft. Yamaguchi was clearly moved by the sacrifice of
Hiry s hik taich . As Tomonaga turned to mount his aircraft, Yamaguchi
moved to shake his hand. Solemnly, he told the lieutenant, “I will gladly follow
you.” To the men standing nearby, it seemed clear that the admiral had no
intention of returning alive from this battle if men like Tomonaga were already
making the ultimate sacrifice for their country.18

16-1: Japanese early afternoon search plans. Haruna’s 1300 search, as well as
the routes ordered by Nagumo at 1315, are both indicated. Which of these
individual search lines were actually flown, and by whom, remains a mystery.

At around 1315, while Tomonaga’s unit was still being briefed, the first of
Kobayashi’s divebombers began returning. Finding the flight deck already
spotted, one of them buzzed the ship and dropped a message, which Cdr.
Kawaguchi Susumu, Hiry ’s hik ch , retrieved. According to the note, the
attack force had left the enemy force at a bearing of 080 degrees and ninety
miles distant. It was composed of five heavy cruisers and a carrier, the latter
burning heavily. Kawaguchi entrusted this information to Lieutenant Hashimoto,
not knowing that Tomonaga’s backseater would not be with him on this flight.
Thus, Tomonaga was not in possession of the most current information on
Yorktown’s location as he started his mission.19
At last all was in readiness. Hiry began launching at 1330, watched
intently by every man fortunate enough to be topside. None was more attentive
than Admiral Yamaguchi, who stood gazing solemnly as the aircraft went up one
by one. Hiry ’s final strike force assembled, wheeled, and made their way
toward the eastern horizon. Win or lose, it was all down to this. Near at hand,
Captain Kaku was already giving orders to begin landing Kobayashi’s aircraft.
After recovering them, Hiry would swing out of the wind and take up a
northerly course, intending to converge with Nagara and Nagumo.

When Tomonaga was on his way, Commander Kawaguchi cleared the deck and
recovered aircraft. First to come down was S ry ’s Type 2 recon bird, followed
by the remnants of the divebomber strike force. Of the twenty-four aircraft Hiry
had sent aloft with Kobayashi at 1057, just six were landing now–five kanbaku
and a Zero. The fighter and one of the kanbaku were both shot up to such a
degree as to be unserviceable. Lieutenants Kobayashi and Kond were not
among the returning aircraft. The details of the mission were difficult to discern
from the survivors–their accounts didn’t jibe terribly well. As such, Hiry s
officers found it difficult to piece together a cohesive account from the men until
long after the battle was actually over.
Kobayashi’s mission seemed to have started out well enough. After
launching, the strike force had proceeded at relatively low altitude, because the
visibility seemed better, though they climbed as they got closer to the suspected
location of the American fleet.20 Then at 1132 had come the welcome signal
from Chikuma No. 5 that would guide the attack birds to the target, followed by
Hiry ’s own message ten minutes later rebroadcasting the location of the
Americans.
However, at about the same time, Kobayashi’s bombers had lost their
fighter cover. Lieutenant Shigematsu’s Zeros spotted what appeared to be enemy
torpedo aircraft below and ahead of them. He asked for, and received permission
to engage them.21 In retrospect, this was clearly a mistake. Indulging in a taste
for combat against enemy aircraft that were of no immediate threat to Hiry was
a poor reason to forgo close support of Kobayashi’s precious bombers. Yet this
was typical for Japanese fighters, who had not yet begun to internalize the
fundamental truth that close support was the only kind of support that really
mattered.
Diving down with his six Zeros, Shigematsu had encountered not enemy
TBDs, but Lt. Charles Ware’s doomed flight of Enterprise SBDs. The ensuing
affray had been sharp. The Japanese made numerous passes at the Dauntlesses
but discovered for themselves what many of their CAP compatriots had already
learned earlier in the morning–American divebombers were formidable
opponents when they flew in close formation. The Zeros were rudely surprised
by the hot reception they got. In fact, they succeeded in shooting down none of
the SBDs. However, two kansen (WO Minegishi Yoshijiro and PO1c Sasaki
Hitoshi) were damaged severely enough in return that they had to break off the
fight and limp back to Hiry .22 In the end, only Minegishi’s Zero managed to
make it back, just in time to be turned around for Tomonaga’s outbound strike
mission. Sasaki was forced to ditch near one of Hiry ’s escorts at about 1230. It
was thus a rather chastened Shigematsu who led his surviving quartet of Zeros
back in pursuit of Kobayashi’s force, which had gone on ahead. As it developed,
Shigematsu’s fighters were not available to Kobayashi when it counted most.
At 1152 Yorktown’s radar had detected an unknown flight of aircraft
coming in.23 Her radar operator was one of the best in the business, and he
managed to coax from his rather primitive equipment the fact that these aircraft
were in the process of climbing–something friendly aircraft looking to land
would never have done.24 The American CAP had just been in the process of
rotating. However, Yorktown had twenty fighters up, and radar gave them time
enough, barely, to send the majority to intercept Kobayashi. Even so, the
Wildcats didn’t have time to gain sufficient altitude, nor were they properly
formed up, forcing them to attack singly or in small groups.
Kobayashi’s formation was arrayed in a right echelon of two chutai, each
formed into its own “V” of three sh tai.25 Kobayashi sighted the enemy carrier
at noon and promptly sent a message to Hiry announcing that he was attacking.
Almost immediately thereafter, though, the kanbaku unit had been set upon by
American fighters coming in from below and ahead. The Americans had pressed
their attacks boldly. One Wildcat, piloted by Lt. (jg) Elbert S. McCuskey, took
one run against the formation, came around for a second pass, and found itself
facing Yamashita’s 2nd ch tai almost head-on. Like a hawk hitting a flock of
pigeons, McCuskey blew Yamashita’s formation apart. Several Japanese pilots
were forced to break ranks to avoid being rammed by his Wildcat. Meanwhile,
Kobayashi’s lead ch tai had been similarly thrown into confusion.
As soon as the Japanese formation had broken, a fresh group of American
fighters had charged into their heart, firing with great precision. Several kanbaku
had gone down in flames almost immediately, including the leader of the 2nd ch
tai, Lieutenant Kond . Lt. Arthur J. Brassfield single-handedly annihilated a sh
tai of bombers that made it out of the melee and attempted to break toward
Yorktown. Another pair was forced to jettison their bombs. In several cases, the
nimble Type 99s tried maneuvering onto the tails of the American Wildcats,
although this tactic had met with little success.
It was around this time that Shigematsu’s Zeros finally rejoined the battle.
It was a good thing, too, as new elements of Grummans were continually
appearing on the scene. Thereupon, Shigematsu’s quartet had a furious exchange
with the American Wildcats, whose pilots were more than willing to mix it up
with their opposite numbers. The results were again sharply unpleasant for the
Japanese, with three of Shigematsu’s men shot down for only a single Grumman
bagged in return. The doughty Shigematsu was the only survivor.26 Finally, at
about 1210, the remaining seven armed kanbaku had begun their attack runs on
Yorktown–a fact that one of their number, perhaps Lieutenant Nakayama, had
thereupon signaled to Hiry . The coherence of their original formation long
since destroyed, the Japanese bombers were forced to attack singly or in small
groups.

16-2: Hiry divebomber attack, 1211–1214.

Before them lay the American task force. The enemy flattop had been
closely guarded by a tight ring of cruisers and destroyers, each of which could
contribute to the defense of the carrier in the center. The Japanese had come in
from directions ranging across half the compass, peeling into sharp, precise
dives. Just as the men of Kid Butai had been forced to give grudging
admiration to the technique of Enterprise’s and Yorktown’s divebombers two
hours earlier, so too the men on Yorktown were aware that they were watching
seasoned professionals in action. The Japanese pilots attacked coolly and
deliberately, holding their dives to the absolute limit while displaying an utter
disdain for the ferocious antiaircraft fire being directed back at them. These men
were all part of Nagumo’s “A-team” that had been held in reserve from the
morning strike against Midway. The results of their attack on Yorktown proved
that their admiral’s faith in them had been well deserved.

The first Type 99 had attacked from directly astern, holding his dive to the last
possible second. In fact, to several observers it appeared that this particular pilot
had no intention of pulling out at all. However, contemptuous as Japanese
kanbaku pilots were of antiaircraft fire, the immutable truth was that American
flak was intense and accurate. The 1.1-inch machine guns located aft of
Yorktown’s island summarily chopped this particular bomber into pieces just as
it released its weapon–a 242-kilogram high-explosive bomb intended for flak
suppression. The smashed kanbaku fell in three sections into the carrier’s wake.
Nevertheless, this pilot had aimed his weapon with great skill.27 Tumbling end
over end, the bomb hit Yorktown just abaft her midships elevator, detonating in a
bright flash. It was almost as if the unknown pilot was exacting a posthumous
retribution, as his bomb slaughtered the 1.1-inch crews who had just shot him
down.
Despite the ship’s temporarily lessened firepower, Hiry s second
divebomber was given exactly the same treatment. Diving along a similar line
from astern, his kanbaku was blown into pieces by flak and fell headlong into
the ship’s wake. The detonation of his high-explosive bomb peppered
Yorktown’s stern with fragments and started some incidental fires on the fantail.
The third attacker, the last man from the 1st ch tai was PO2c Tsuchiya
Takayoshi. Approaching from astern as well, Tsuchiya held a steep 75-degree
dive down to low level and secured what appeared to be a hit with his semi
armor-piercing bomb. In fact, though, he planted it close alongside the carrier’s
stern. Tsuchiya avoided the fate of his two comrades and managed to scoot away
at wave-top height.

16-3: Japanese divebomber holding its dive down to the limit during
Kobayashi’s attack. Judging by the splash of another kanbaku off Yorktowtfs
bow, this aircraft is probably that of PO2c Tsuchiya Takayoshi. He has pressed
his attack to within about 1600 feet of Yorktown, at an angle of around 65
degrees, and is just nearing his release point.28

 Next came four aircraft from the 2nd ch tai. They attacked in an arc across
Yorktown’s starboard beam. Yorktowrn, though, was a difficult target to hit,
maneuvering as she was at thirty knots. Almost as soon as the 2nd ch tai started
coming in, she began executing a turn to port to throw off their aim. The next
attacker was PO1c Matsumoto Sadao, who began angling in almost immediately
after Tsuchiya’s run. Coming in slightly less steeply than Tsuchiya, he thought
he secured a hit on the elusive carrier’s stern. Yet he, too, had actually dropped
his high-explosive bomb in Yorktown’s wake.
However, Yorktown’s luck had finally run out as the next kanbaku headed
in. This bird was piloted by WO Nakazawa Iwao, in whose backseat rode
Special Service Ens. Nakayama Shimematsu, leader of the 2nd shotai.
Nakazawa dove steeply from about 8,000 feet. His aim was true, and despite the
heavy fire being thrown up by Yorktown and her escorts, he planted his 250-
kilogram semi armor-piercing bomb directly amidships. Immediately, Yorktown
began belching enormous clouds of thick black smoke.29 Heavily damaged, her
speed began dropping noticeably, which decreased her ability to fend off the
next attack.
This was delivered by WO Nakagawa Shizuo, the leader of the 2nd ch tais
3rd shotai. Taking a new tack, he came in on Yorktown’s starboard bow from
about 7,500 feet. Whether the enemy carrier was distracted by Nakazawa’s hit or
her gunners were just less observant in this particular direction, his aircraft
benefited from much-reduced antiaircraft fire. Nakagawa also eschewed normal
divebombing technique in favor of glide bombing. He could have taught Lofton
Henderson’s men a thing or two about this overlooked attack method, as he
slung his 250-kg bomb almost directly on top of the carrier’s forward elevator.
Yorktown took a heavy hit, with the several fires resulting from this bomb
threatening both the ship’s magazine and its forward aviation gasoline stores.
However, unlike Japanese carriers, the American flattop had protected herself
better from her own avgas system. A fueling bowser that was on the flight deck
before the attack had been unceremoniously consigned to the drink to remove its
flammable contents from any possibility of harming the ship. More important,
Yorktown’s personnel had earlier drained her fuel lines and flooded them with
inert CO2 gas. This was the first usage of this recent damage-control innovation.
Yorktown’s experience in earlier battles was showing, and it paid handsome
dividends. Had Yorktown been forced to fight a major avgas fire at this juncture,
with six of her nine boilers already knocked off line, Nakagawa’s hit could well
have been fatal. As it was, however, her damage was manageable.
The seventh and last aircraft to dive was that of PO1c Seo Tetsuo,
Nakazawa’s wingman. Pushing over from about 8,000 feet, Seo aimed at the
carrier’s starboard beam. His dive was somewhat shallower than many of those
that had preceded it. Whether the clouds of smoke billowing from Yorktown
threw off his aim, or his dive simply needed a little steepening, Seo suffered a
near miss close aboard Yorktown’s side.
All in all, Hiry s pilots had executed a superlative attack. Seven aircraft had
secured three direct hits and two very near misses–an enviable rate of accuracy
in anyone’s book. Not only that, but judging by the smoke emanating from the
target, and her rapidly decreasing headway, the carrier appeared to be heavily,
perhaps fatally hit. Lieutenant Kobayashi would have been proud of his men.
The commander of Hiry s kanbaku unit, however, did not survive the
attack. None of his aviators had seen what happened to him, despite the fact that
he had lived through the initial fracas with the American Grummans. Indeed, it
is clear that Kobayashi himself had witnessed Tsuchiya’s initial hit on the target,
because it was he who had broadcast at 1211–“[Message] Number Two. Fires
break out on carrier. 0901 [sic]”30 Yet when the attack was over, Kobayashi had
simply disappeared.31 The five survivors from Hiry s decimated group had
thereafter made their way home without any of their senior leaders. Ensign
Nakayama was now the sole surviving officer of what had once been one of the
finest divebomber squadrons in the Imperial Navy. They had truly given their
all. But would it be enough?

The outcome of Kobayashi’s attack, in conjunction with the sighting reports

from S ry s speedy D4Y, should have given Yamaguchi (and Nagumo shortly
thereafter) final, conclusive evidence that it was now time to break off the day’s
action and begin falling back on the Main Body. Both sides could do grade-
school arithmetic. After debriefing Kobayashi’s aviators, Yamaguchi would
have known that he had hit an enemy carrier, but only one. That carrier was out
of action, but whether it was in danger of sinking was unknown. Kobayashi’s
squadron had been gutted in the process, yet two other American carriers
remained unfought. If closing the range with the Americans had been
questionable after Kobayashi’s launch, even with Nagumo’s surface group
pushed ahead in the van, it was doubly so now.
Indeed, Yamaguchi should have been able to divine at least three good
reasons for advising Nagumo to break off offensive air activities immediately.
First, even if Tomonaga’s outbound group did achieve some results, it would
likely be at the expense of most or all of his remaining aircraft. The relationship
between the application of marginal force and taking disproportionate casualties
was well known. If Hiry ’s eighteen divebombers had been chopped to pieces
attacking a single enemy carrier, ten of the more vulnerable torpedo planes were
likely to fare much worse in any subsequent strike against a pair of them.
Second, even if Tomonaga did achieve results against another enemy
carrier, Hiry would likely be in no position to exploit his success in any event.
With her airpower caught in a downward spiral, Hiry ’s subsequent strikes could
only be weaker. The truth was that at this point in the battle, Hiry was really no
longer in a position to tackle anything more formidable than a target barge. With
the remnants of Kid Butai’s CAP still overhead, she might have the ability to
defend herself for a time. But she really had no offensive firepower left.
This leads directly to the third good reason for disengaging. In the absence
of any real offensive capability, the preservation of an extremely valuable carrier
for use in future operations should have taken precedence over trying to pull off
a miracle. It certainly should have taken precedence over anyone’s sense of
personal honor. Given these same odds, an American commander’s reaction
would most likely have been to cut his losses and run for it, forthrightly and
without embarrassment. Even granting that the ultimate power of decision lay
with Nagumo, Yamaguchi had every reason to advise his superior that now
looked like a good time to get out while the getting was good. He had certainly
never been shy in making suggestions to his superior before this supremely
important moment–now would have been a good time to reinforce his reputation
for outspokenness.
However, Japanese admirals operated according to an entirely different
martial calculus. Even before the cataclysmic 1020 attack, Nagumo had clearly
wanted to engage the Americans in a surface battle. Now that the battle had
turned against them, Yamaguchi saw no reason to modify that stance. Instead of
being the centerpiece of his fleet, Hiry was now just a disposable component.
Yamaguchi would continue closing with his commander’s flagship, which had
the effect of trailing his own coattails in front of the enemy and increasing Hiry
’s danger measurably every minute.

The Americans, meanwhile, were trying their best to recover from Kobayashi’s
attack. Yorktown was crippled, drifting, with thick clouds of black smoke trailing
from her innards. Her fires were serious, with damage-control parties busy in
several places belowdecks. Down in her engine spaces, workmen were trying
their best to bring at least some of her boilers back on line, despite the damage to
her uptakes. Yorktown’s flight deck was also holed from bomb hits, and crews
were scurrying to jury-rig patches using wooden beams and steel plates to cover
her wounds. All in all, she was a mess. With her radar disabled and her
command spaces bathed in smoke, Admiral Fletcher rightly decided to transfer
his flag to heavy cruiser Astoria. A whaleboat was brought alongside, and
Fletcher made the trip over to the cruiser, arriving at 1324.32
Hornet and Enterprise were thus left with the task of recovering their own
attack aircraft and those of Yorktown, many of which were still dribbling back
from the morning’s operations. Not only that, but they would have to put CAP
assets not only over TF 16, but over Yorktown as well. Enterprise sent up
additional fighters at 1235. But by 1258 Yorktown’s fighters were showing up at
her sister’s doorstep, looking for a place to land. For her part, Hornet had
completed landing her own SBDs at 1209, while Kobayashi was attacking. She,
too, had found Yorktown Wildcats needing to land and duly brought them down.
In the process, though, one of Thach’s morning strike escorts, carrying a
wounded pilot, had landed hard enough to trigger its machine guns. The
resulting spray of .50-caliber fire riddled the deck park forward and killed five
men, including the son of a prominent U.S. admiral. As soon as she had cleared
her decks from the latest fiasco of her miserable day, the last of her own CAP
fighters needed to be brought on board. Thus, Hornet was occupied with
recovery and launch operations from around noon until 1329.
On board Enterprise, Admiral Spruance was, for all intents and purposes,
on his own. Seeing a towering column of smoke rising on the horizon as the
result of the attack on Yorktown, he had promptly dispatched the heavy cruisers
Pensacola and Vincennes and destroyers Balch and Benham to assist Fletcher’s
flagship. Yet, with Fletcher currently bobbing around in Astoria’s whaleboat, the
senior American admiral was unable to assert any control over the battle. His
subordinate, Spruance, was in the dark. He still had no clear idea where the
remaining enemy carrier or carriers were located, and until he did, he couldn’t
order further strikes.

As Hiry continued charging to the east, her three stricken compatriots were
entering new stages of extremis. The fires had been blazing on Akagi, Kaga, and
S ry for several hours now, and the ships were beginning to suffer permanent
structural damage as a result. On board Akagi and Kaga, which each had an
elevator that had been dropped into its well, the situation would have been
aggravated, because the elevator shafts began acting like chimneys, venting
smoke at the top and sucking air in through the bottom. The effect was to create
a blast furnace. Steel structural members, having been heated too hot and for too
long, were now glowing red and beginning to come apart under the strain. Even
the incredibly sturdy riveted construction of the carriers’ hulls and hangar decks
could not withstand the combination of weakening frames being hammered by
induced explosions. Under such circumstances, large chunks of the carriers,
some weighing dozens of tons, were simply being blown overboard.33
Inside, the bulkheads in the vicinity of the fires were now mostly bare, red-
hot metal, the chalky, sodium-silicate fireproof paint having been either flaked
off in handfuls by the explosions or scorched away by the flames. The aircraft in
the hangars had long since been melted down to aluminum slag, leaving only the
glowing steel engine blocks deposited on the hangar decks. Not surprisingly,
almost the entirety of the hangars on board both Kaga and S ry had long since
been abandoned to the fires.
On Akagi, though, the struggle continued. The fact that she had managed to
rig a pump on the bow helped matters, but it really only delayed the inevitable.
Without the possibility of restoring power, and thereby vastly increasing her
pumping capacity, she couldn’t make any headway against the fires. Aoki
essentially acknowledged this when, at 1338, he ordered the emperor’s portrait
transferred to Nowaki.34 The imperial visage was sent over the side and into a
waiting launch to make its way to Nowaki. It was doubtless clutched to the chest
of some unknown officer, who would have perforce accompanied it to the
bottom if an accident or misstep had cast him into the sea. Thus was Aoki’s
primary responsibility to the emperor absolved. It remained now only for the
captain to share the fate of his ship, whatever that might be. Akagi continued her
grim circling.
Even as Akagi’s engines persisted in their mysterious activities, Kaga’s
machinery was finally closing down for good. Though she had been crawling
northwest for some time now, between 1250 and 1300 she ground to a halt.35
This final loss of power, and with it any hope of real damage control, led to the
conclusion that it was time to transfer his majesty’s portrait to a safer venue. At
1325 it was transferred to one of Hagikaze’s boats standing by the anchor deck.
Meanwhile, at about the same time, Kaga’s commanding officer–
Commander Amagai–had apparently gotten himself back on board his blazing
ship, most likely on the anchor deck as well. Despite the common wisdom on the
matter, there is, in fact, considerable ambiguity concerning whether or not
Amagai was, or even believed himself to be, in command of the burning carrier.
He had jumped from Kaga’s boat deck earlier, yet Kaga had remained
underway, and apparently nominally under command, during his time in the
water or on Hagikaze. Someone, and it wasn’t Amagai, must have made the
decision to remove the emperor’s portrait, and possibly ordered her engines shut
down as well. Lieutenant Kunisada mentions in his account that the chief
damage-control officer, the head of the First Damage Control Section, was
apparently directing matters from the Kaga’s forecastle. If this is true, then he,
and not Amagai, was most likely the acting commanding officer of Kaga in the
period from 1300 to her final abandonment. Indeed, Amagai himself made the
rather curious statement regarding his ordering the men over the side and then
joining them. He said that he made the decision “believing that the skilled fliers,
who could not be replaced, should be saved so that they could have another
chance of fighting. … At the same time, I thought that the fate of the ship would
be better left to her skipper or the second command officer in case he was
killed.”36 The implication is that Amagai did not believe he was in command,
nor was he certain that Captain Okada had even been killed. That Amagai
subsequently filed the report on her loss only indicates that by then it had finally
been ascertained that he was, in fact, her senior surviving officer. But there’s no
evidence to show that Amagai actually knew this at the time.
With Kaga now dead in the water, though, whoever was in charge decided
that it was time to get the engineers out of the lower spaces. A messenger was
sent below to the engine rooms to tell them to evacuate and come topside.
However, he could not get through.37 Some of them must have abandoned their
posts, though, for the black gang was not entirely wiped out. However, 213 of
her nominal complement of 323 engineers ultimately perished, including her
chief engineer, Cdr. Utsumi Hachir .38 It’s reasonable to imagine that many of
them were either already dead by the time they were ordered to evacuate or were
trapped below with no hope of escape. Their terrible fates can only be imagined
as the fires finally worked their way down into the great ship’s innards.
At about the same time, Lieutenant Kunisada was in a bind. After the
enormous explosions in the hangar, he had finally come to his senses to find
himself lying on the hangar deck.39 Standing up in the smoky darkness, he had
realized that he was near the midships elevator and could see some light coming
down the well. He made for the command spaces. Whether by chance or design,
though, he never reached the command spaces at all, and instead found himself
fighting the fires on the lower hangar deck level, near amidships.40
Eventually, Kunisada found himself in the petty officers quarters. Inside, he
found two engineering personnel taking shelter from the fire. Kunisada ordered
one of them to open the porthole in the space, and the compartment immediately
became bright with sunlight. He then shouted “Maintenance Officer is here! All
section men come here to me! Gather in this light!”41 Eventually, a total of eight
men then showed up, half of whom were injured. Several were streaming blood,
and all were already weary and darkened with smoke. One of them was the chief
of the 3rd emergency section of damage-control personnel. This man
(erroneously) told Kunisada that their mutual commander, the chief damage-
control officer, and all his subordinates had been killed or wounded. He himself
was the only man remaining from the third section. Kunisada thus believed
himself Kaga’s senior damage-control officer.
The third section man was despondent and urged Kunisada to give in to the
inevitable. “Come,” he said, ’let’s go share the commander’s fate!” He then
turned to make his way back to the hangar so as to seek death in battle. Kunisada
restrained him. Suddenly, the fire flared up near the entrance to the
compartment, surprising the men inside. They slammed the porthole shut and
tried to put out the fire, but the air quality worsened precipitously and breathing
became difficult. There was no longer any way out, and Kunisada wondered if
their fates were now sealed. As a last resort, he ordered all the men to clamber
out of the porthole. As it happened, the antitorpedo bulge on Kaga’s hull formed
a sort of shelf in this section of the vessel. It was wide enough for them to stand
on.
Their perch was none too safe. Hanging above them and somewhat astern
were the large gun tubs for the five-inch AA mounts. Unfortunately, the shell
hoists for the guns were burning, and the shells in the hoists were detonating
periodically. Ammunition for the machine guns was also cooking off farther
astern, sending bullets whizzing about every so often. Visibility was rotten. They
couldn’t see the bow because of the bulk of the ship’s funnel, and the stern was
out of sight behind the fires.
One of Kunisada’s party slipped off the bulge and plunged into the water.
Someone threw him a line, and they all grabbed hold. But the man, injured or
simply exhausted, failed to hold on and sank vertically into the sea. The water
was so clear that they could see his white uniform shimmering below the surface
as he slowly sank into the depths. It was a most depressing moment and brought
home their isolation. Still, their precarious ledge was better than what lay
waiting for them on board the ship. So there they huddled, waiting for whatever
came next.
Kunisada’s men were not the only ones to have exited the blazing ship via
her portholes. In the ship’s sick bay, the senior medical man present was an
ensign.42 There was no sign of the ship’s surgeon. Knowing that the sick bay
was cut off from the rest of the ship by the fires, the ensign sent a runner named
Okamoto out to look for an escape route. However, none could be found. When
Okamoto reported this to his superior, the officer simply said, “Many thanks for
your good efforts,” and sat back resignedly to face death. The decks around were
getting hot, and the paint on the overheads was beginning to smolder and burn.
However, at this juncture another one of the men–a senior petty officer–
noticed the portholes.43 Hurriedly, he, Okamoto, and the other orderlies moved
everyone they could, including all of the wounded strong enough to make it, out
through the portholes. Unlike Kunisada’s party, though, there was no torpedo
bulge immediately below their perch–from the sick bay it was a straight jump
into the ocean. In they went–all except the petty officer who had discerned the
escape route. He himself was too stout to fit through. Thus, he stayed behind,
along with those too badly injured to move, to await the fate that would not be
long in coming.

Kaga’s final demise might well have come at about this time, had it not been for
a rather incredible stroke of luck. With the carrier having now ground to a stop,
the Nautilus was finally given the rewards of her dogged pursuit. Kaga now lay
motionless in front of Lt. Cdr. William Brockman’s boat. He noted “two
cruisers” escorting what he tentatively identified as a S ry -class carrier.44 To
the U.S. skipper, the stricken carrier appeared to be “on an even keel and the hull
appeared to be undamaged. There were no flames and the fire seemed to be
under control,” although her topsides were already clearly demolished.
Brockman also noted that the men on her bow seemed to be trying to rig her for
towing.45
Brockman chose an approach course to attack her starboard side. Finally, at
1359, he let fly with four torpedoes at his helpless target, firing from somewhat
astern at a track angle of 125 degrees. The range to the target was 2,700 yards.
Brockman kept his scope up and noted the somewhat disconcerting fact that “the
wakes of the torpedoes were observed through the periscope until the torpedoes
struck the target.”46 Not surprisingly, the fact that Brockman could see the
wakes meant that the Japanese could see them as well. It wouldn’t take much
guessing for Kaga’s escorts to determine from which direction the attack had
come.
Lieutenant Kunisada saw the fish coming in.47 From his perch on Kaga’s
flank, the torpedo tracks stretched toward him like accusatory fingers. Yelling to
the men around him to jump and swim for their lives, Kunisada leaped into the
water. The others belatedly followed suit, and everyone swam madly away from
Kaga. Lieutenant Commander Mitoya, likewise, saw the torpedoes heading for
him and could do nothing but hold his breath.48 Anyone in the water anywhere
near the thunderous impact was as good as dead in any case.
In a war that would be replete with examples of faulty U.S. torpedoes,
Brockman’s attack was destined to be one of the crown jewels. The first of his
four fish malfunctioned and never left the tube. Two others ran errantly, one
missing Kaga astern, the other missing ahead. The fourth and final torpedo ran
hot and true, aimed dead amidships. But when it struck Kaga’s heavy hull, its
contact exploder was either faulty or was crushed by the impact–a common
failing of U.S. submarine torpedoes at the time. There was no explosion. Instead,
the fish broke in half, sending the warhead to the bottom and leaving the air flask
and tail assembly bobbing in the water.49 The men already swimming nearby
greeted the scene with a mixture of rage and incredulous relief. Some of the
sailors quickly seized on the unexpected life raft in their midst, but no one was
happy with it. Several shouted curses and pounded it with their fists. It was just
the latest abuse heaped on them in a morning already filled with more than their
share of terror.
Oddly enough, Nautilus’s skipper came away with a much different
impression of the attack’s results. Brockman reported that “red flames appeared
along the length of the ship from the bow to midships. The fire which had first
attracted us … and was nearly extinguished … broke out. Boats drew away from
the bow and many men were seen going over the side. Cruisers began reversing
course at high speed and started to echo range.”50 This is a vivid description, and
more than a little puzzling. It is no wonder that some have found Nautilus’s
sinking claim hard to dismiss,51 although it is incontrovertible that Kaga
remained afloat.
Brockman was also correct that the “cruisers” were now gunning for his
submarine. Destroyer Hagikaze, which had been off Kaga’s starboard quarter at
the time of the attack, swung to starboard and went to high speed to close.52
Commander Iwagami Juichi immediately began laying down depth charges.
Captain Brockman’s report confirms the ferocity and speed of the first attack. At
1410 Hagikaze went thrashing directly overhead, and Brockman quickly
reversed course and crash-dived to 300 feet. Eleven depth charges splashed into
the water at 1422 and detonated with unpleasant results. Brockman noted that
“This entire barrage was close and well placed except that the charges were set
too shallow and exploded above the ship. A few small leaks were sprung [in the
submarine].” Iwagami’s first run had been good, and he lost no time in making
another at 1431, which came even closer. Nautilus’s sound operator reported the
noise of propellers “all around the dial,” making it likely that Maikaze had also
joined in the counterattack.53
Kaga’s destroyers subjected Nautilus to a brutal ordeal for the next two
hours and came within an ace of sinking the American submarine when two of
their depth charges evidently clanged against the sub at 340 feet but did not
explode. Despite this close call, after enduring forty-two depth charges,
Brockman was eventually able to sneak away from his attacker, though he
judged it unsafe to return to periscope depth till 1610.54 Though Brockman
opined that the Japanese broke off their attack too soon, he was understandably
thankful that they had, as his battery was nearly exhausted. The actual damage to
his old boat, however, proved negligible. All in all, though, Nautilus had made a
well-earned escape after a day of aggressive attacks against the enemy. If the
final prize of her efforts eluded her, it certainly was not for lack of trying.

Lieutenant Kunisada could observe little of the hunt for Nautilus from his
current position. Now that he was in the water, he had no choice but to continue
swimming. Many men were drifting about with him. Looking back at the ship
towering high above him, he could see that her damage was severe but localized.
Her upperworks were ablaze, with dull red fires visible through the many rents
in her side. Heat shimmered off the metal. But the worst of the fires seemed to
be dying down for the moment–the smoke coming from the ship was no longer
oily black, but a lighter brown color. Kunisada could see, too, that the bridge had
been crushed by the explosion that had killed Captain Okada. There were deep
rents in Kaga’s side, particularly on the starboard side aft of the funnel, and on
the port side forward. Some of these gashes ran nearly all the way to the
waterline. Yet Kaga’s lower hull was remarkably intact. Despite her wounds, she
still impressed the damage-control officer with her bulk, and seeming stability.
On both the bow and stern he could see sailors clustered and firefighting efforts
continued.55
While in the water, Kunisada encountered a communications man named
Oda, who was still clutching a sheaf of Kaga’s messages in one hand while
trying to swim. Oda was wounded in the leg and was bleeding. Kunisada, though
impressed by the man’s devotion to duty, nevertheless told him to throw the
damned messages away and concentrate on saving himself. Oda responded to
this direct order with relief, throwing the papers into the sea. Finding a piece of
lumber, the two men hung on. They tried swimming toward the ship’s stern, but
either currents or wave action made this impossible, and they eventually gave
up. They would not be picked up for several more hours, finally crawling on
board Hagikaze at about 1600.56
WO Yoshino Haruo, Kaga’s reconnaissance flight leader, was in the water
by now as well. Having made his escape from the flight deck shortly after the
carrier was bombed, he had managed to pick his way down to the stern. He had
found Kaga’s boat deck packed with survivors. As soon as Kaga lost power, he
noticed a destroyer (probably Hagikaze) edging up to her stern and decided to
swim out to her. Into the water he went, along with many other men. However,
all of a sudden the destroyer turned about and disappeared–most likely in
response to Nautilus’s attack. Now Yoshino’s case was worse, and he didn’t
know if he could survive. In the end, though, Hagikaze returned, and he
managed to make it on board about the same time Kunisada did. As he came
dripping out of the water and onto the deck, he unexpectedly met a relative who
served on the tin can. Deeply shamed by his appearance and at having been
defeated in battle, Yoshino nevertheless accepted dry clothes from the man. He
hoped that his relation would not tell everybody at home about his pitiable
condition.57
Wounded torpedo bomber pilot Maeda Takeshi also made it on board. Like
Yoshino, he had gone into the water as soon as Hagikaze had started to edge in.
In fact, he had been bodily thrown into the water by other men on the fantail.58
Seeing Hagikaze putting out her boats, they had assumed that any of the less
severely wounded would be better off being picked up and taken to safety on the
destroyer than waiting around on Kaga, where no medical attention could be
provided. Upon Hagikaze’s abrupt exit from the scene, however, Maeda’s
hoped-for rescue evaporated, and his shipmates’ intended kindness now placed
him in grave danger. He had a life jacket, but he kept swallowing seawater in the
long swells. Occasionally, as he surged to the tops of the waves, he could see S
ry burning in the distance.
Finally Hagikaze returned, this time with knotted ropes lowered along both
her flanks. Pulled out of the cold water, Maeda was in deep shock from both
exposure and the bomb splinter still lodged in his leg. He wasn’t feeling any
pain. In fact, he found that he could walk on his wounded limb, despite having a
smashed femur. When the shock wore off later, such a thing would have been
unthinkable. His flight boots were long gone, and the hot cartridges from the
destroyer’s 25-mm mounts were everywhere underfoot. They made sizzling
sounds when his wet socks struck them, burning his feet.59 The young ship’s
doctor was too busy to attend to him properly–there was no anesthetic, and he’d
already run out of bandages. He merely splashed iodine solution on Maeda’s
open wound. The pain was absolutely excruciating, but Maeda managed to keep
his composure. Later, he would credit the cooler seawater and the iodine for
saving his limb from gangrene. His abbreviated treatment at an end, the aviator
slumped down on the deck to stare at Kaga.
To Maeda, the situation was beyond caring about, beyond any sort of
reflection. He was just twenty-one years old, and his life as an aviator had been
dangerous enough in peacetime. In wartime, it was more dangerous than almost
anything. He knew that he was expendable. He’d been treated as such, treated
“like a rag.”60 He didn’t resent it–it was what he expected. So Maeda couldn’t
really comprehend “the Big Picture” of what losing this battle might mean to
Japan, or its ability to win the war. He couldn’t even consider what the future
might bring. There was no future; there wasn’t even a tomorrow. There was only
the present moment. He was safe enough for the time being, but he was
exhausted, he was famished, and his leg hurt like hell. Kaga continued burning.

In the sea next to the blazing S ry , Gunnery Officer Kanao had now been
drifting on his ladder for some time, but his movement relative to the ship was
almost imperceptible.61 However, without his being aware of it, he had gradually
begun to pull abreast of the anchor deck. Suddenly, somebody yelled down to
him from above, “Look! There’s the gunnery officer!” Looking up from his
piece of flotsam, Kanao saw a sailor fasten a rope to the guardrail and rappel
down. Grabbing the gunnery officer, the sailor and Kanao were soon hauled
back up on deck. As they reached the top, many hands pulled them back over the
railing. Kanao felt like a zombie; half-dead and half-alive. The sailors on the
deck embraced him, cheering, “Gunnery Officer is alive! Banzai to our gunnery
officer!’
Huddled on the anchor deck, Kanao found some forty or fifty men who had
either not heard the order to abandon ship, or who preferred to take their chances
here rather than in the water. Kanao slumped exhausted onto one of the anchor
chains, utterly unable to move. Nearby, two or three sailors hauled out a box and
broke it open. Inside were canned peaches. One of the sailors opened a can with
his knife and handed it to Kanao, saying, “Help yourself, Gunnery Officer!”
Kanao thanked him, but hesitated to take it. “There is enough for all of us,” the
sailor assured him, and continued passing out the cans to the others on the bow.
Famished, Kanao consumed everything in the tin. The taste of the sweet fruit
and nectar was indescribably delicious–Kanao couldn’t remember ever having
eaten anything tastier. Aft of their sanctuary on the bow, S ry continued
burning and fuming.
17

Last Gasp–1400–1800

It was 1400, and cruiser Tone wasn’t doing anything to improve her
reputation for untimely floatplane launches. Now, some forty-five minutes after
Admiral Abe had ordered the second set of recon birds aloft, Tone finally
managed to send up her No. 3 and No. 4 planes. The reason for the delay is
unclear. Her No. 3 aircraft, a Type 95, should have been ready to take off at
short notice. It is possible that her No. 4 plane was still being turned around from
the morning’s flight. Whether Petty Officer Amari was in command again is
unclear, but it seems likely that he was.
Just as with Kobayashi’s earlier attack, Yamaguchi hadn’t yet heard back
from Tomonaga’s flight. This wasn’t really a cause for concern yet, as the hik
taich had only been gone for half an hour and would likely need another half
hour to find the enemy. Sure enough, at 1426, Lieutenant Tomonaga came on the
air to order his strike planes into attack formation. A few minutes later, Hiry
intercepted a simple, suggestive order from the flight leader: “Zengun totsugeki!
(All forces attack!)” Clearly, Tomonaga’s flight was about to go into battle.
Almost at the same time, Haruna’s No. 1 aircraft announced that he was
under attack by American fighters and that he suspected American carriers were
in the area. Yamaguchi might have thought that this transmission marked the end
of his scout plane, but, in fact, this particular aircraft would eventually make it
back to Haruna. Superb airmanship allowed the pilot to escape repeated attacks.
However, his observer was killed, and the Type 95 would never fly again.
Had he known it, Yamaguchi had already lost another of his scout planes.
Fate had finally caught up to Chikuma No. 5, which had been poking around the
edges of the American formations all morning. PO1c Takezaki’s bird had
worked itself all the way around to the south of TF 16, scooting in and out of
cloud cover when threatened by American fighters. At 1409, however, Takezaki
had been caught dead to rights by a pair of Wildcats. A single pass was all it
took to shoot the E13A1 to pieces; as the American fighters turned for a second
run, the floatplane exploded. One of the crew members was seen to bail out just
before the detonation, but there would be no survivors from this encounter.

Back on the home front, Yamaguchi was having his own problems with scout
aircraft, both his own, and those of the American variety. First, at 1355 Nagumo
received a transmission from one of Haruna’s planes (which one, we do not
know), stating, “At 1240 the enemy was in position bearing about 90 degrees to
port. It is composed of 5 large cruisers and 5 carriers; the latter were burning.”
However, Nagumo apparently retained some skepticism about the report, placing
a question mark alongside the number “5” in his war diary. His next sighting of
the enemy, however, was more concrete.

17-1: Kid Butai formation, formation, circa 1500, course 045 degrees.

At 1420 Chikuma suddenly laid smoke and began blazing away at what it
thought was a pair of American aircraft. Her sister ship Tone followed suit ten
minutes later, and Hiry s CAP fighters quickly made tracks toward the intruders.
The enemy interlopers beat a hasty retreat shortly thereafter. As it developed, the
intruders were from Yorktown. It will be recalled that several hours earlier, at
1130, she had sent up ten SBD scouts from VS-5.1 Their mission was to follow
up on the success of the morning’s dive-bomber attacks and determine if any
other Japanese carriers were still lurking in the area. One of these sections, led
by Lt. Sam Adams, had pushed its flight to the limit, further even than his
original orders had called for. At 1430, on the return leg, Lieutenant Adams’s
persistence was rewarded when he spotted wakes.
Thus, even as Tomonaga was preparing to attack Yorktown, the curtain on
Hiry s temporary immunity was being rung down. Lieutenant Adams had
promptly gotten off a plain-language spotting report that placed the lone
Japanese carrier bearing 279 degrees and some 110 miles from his point of
origin (i.e., Yorktown’s 1130 launch position), at 31-15'N, 179-05'W2 His
navigation was a little off–he placed Hiry 38 miles westerly of where she
actually was3 –but his was one of the better American spotting reports of the
day. Adams correctly noted that the Japanese were operating in two groups, with
the carrier in one, and a surface group in advance of it.4 As it happened, Adams
spied Kid Butai when Nagumo’s force was still in the lead of Yamaguchi’s
carrier. With Adams’s sighting, the fruits of Yamaguchi’s decision to press
northeast were beginning to be harvested. Had Kid Butai turned northwest
immediately after launching Tomonaga at 1330, Hiry would have been almost
35 miles further west by 1430. This would have made Adams’s detection almost
impossible–the American SBDs had been at the limits of their range as it was.
Shortly after Adams’s retreat, the two Japanese forces were reintegrated.5
Nagumo promptly reorganized his formation with Hiry at the heart of a box
pattern of the force’s heavy ships, still heading 045. BatDiv 3 took up the port
flank in column, at a distance of ten kilometers from the carrier. CruDiv 8’s
Tone and Chikuma guarded the starboard flank of Hiry at a similar distance.6
Flagship Nagara took the van ahead of Hiry , as usual, while the five remaining
destroyers moved into picket positions in a loose circle around the formation as a
whole.

In the midst of Nagumo’s reorganization, Tomonaga’s attack group came back

on the air. It was Lieutenant Hashimoto, the 2nd ch tai leader, announcing “I
carried out torpedo attacks against an enemy carrier and saw two certain hits.”
Yamaguchi and his staff were elated–two hits were almost certainly enough to
put any carrier out of commission. Yet, even before Hashimoto made his report,
Yamaguchi was already thinking ahead to future operations. Seeing that Hiry
was already scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of airpower, CarDiv 2’s
commander was casting about for any additional airpower he could find. At
1430 he had radioed destroyer Nowaki, ordering her to relay to Akagi that if the
flagship had any aircraft on deck, they should take off at once and transfer to
Hiry . It may be that Yamaguchi was aware that Akagi had once again managed
to get underway and was hopeful that she might yet be made operational. It was
a fool’s hope. By 1430 Akagi no longer had any intact aircraft on board, let alone
a flight deck worthy of the name.
Kid Butai’s former flagship was, in fact, lying motionless once again
beneath an enormous column of oily smoke. Her engines, which had propelled
her in a stately clockwise circle for nearly two hours, had finally shut down
again at 1350. It may well have been that whatever damage-control personnel
who had flooded her aft magazines, and presumably restarted her engines as
well, had either withdrawn again or been overwhelmed. Alternately, the
flagship’s boilers, apparently long since untended, may have finally lost steam
pressure. Whatever the reason, Akagi was once again stationary except for the
long, slow rhythm of the swells lapping against her sides.
The grim struggle against her fires, though, ground on relentlessly. To use
damage-control parlance, both hangar decks and the decks immediately beneath
them were still “fully involved,” meaning they were completely afire. Akagis
crew, though, was not giving up and continued putting firefighting parties into
the fray, trying to make their way aft. It would appear that in some areas, at least,
progress was being made. At 1450 contact was temporarily reestablished with
the survivors clustered on the stern and would be again, intermittently, over the
next few hours.
On both Akagi and Kaga, the medical staffs, or what was left of them, were
faced with a horrendous task.7 Gathered on the weather decks fore and aft with
the other survivors, they were plying their trade with whatever was at hand. The
results can only have been pitiable. The survivors were suffering from a variety
of injuries, the most prevalent being burns and shrapnel injuries. There was no
way to treat these wounds beyond the most basic bandaging and splints. Deep-
penetration wounds would have likely killed their recipients relatively quickly
through loss of blood. The burn victims, however, lingered in agony. In some
cases, the badly injured intentionally made their way back into the hangar fires
to die there, rather than suffer further.
As the day wore on, the initial patient load was steadily augmented by
wounded firefighters bearing similar wounds. However, there were new types of
cases as well–smoke inhalation, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke. Smoke
inhalation would have been very common within the closed spaces of the carrier
as men battled the blazes. Combustion of plastics, wool, silk, nylon, rubber, and
paper can all lead to the production of cyanide gas, and all of these materials
were certainly present. Damage-control officer Kunisada noted that on board
Kaga the oil-based paints on the bulkheads had burned, releasing thick toxic
fumes.8 Such conditions were ubiquitous. In many cases, men would have
simply passed out, never to awaken again.
For those men who staggered or were dragged to safety, there was little
relief. Effective treatments for smoke inhalation include administering
humidified oxygen as well as the introduction of fluids, either orally or
intravenously. For heat exhaustion and heat stroke, administering fluids, and in
extreme cases wrapping the patient in wet towels to reduce body temperature,
were both required. None of these remedies, of course, were feasible on the
anchor deck of a burning warship.
For the rest of the crews, fatigue and thirst were taking their toll. Spirit of
Bushido or no, the men were exhausted. The deck crews had been awake since
about 0230, in combat from 0600 on, and fighting fires since 1030. There was no
ready access to food or drinking water on the burning warships. The firefighting
was being done with seawater, of course. As a result, by the midafternoon, the
men were beginning to fail physically, making them torpid. Firefighting crews
would have become increasingly inefficient and liable to make mistakes.
Physical exhaustion, coupled with the knowledge that for all intents and
purposes they had already lost the fight against the fires, can only have led to a
gradual flagging of effort as men resigned themselves to the inevitability of
losing their ships.
As if to punctuate this knowledge, at 1500 an enormous explosion occurred
in the forward area of Akagi’s hangars, probably near the bomb lifts. The blast
blew open the curved forward bulkhead that overhung the anchor deck. Smoke
and flame poured forth. Whether this blast put the hand-operated pump on
Akagi’s forecastle out of business is unknown, but at the very least it brought
home to the men clustered there the reality of the situation. The fires were in
charge.

While Yamaguchi had been handling the air operations on Hiry , Admiral
Nagumo was busily considering how to continue the battle beyond 4 June. At
1420, just before Tomonaga had announced he was attacking the American
carrier, the commander of Dai-ichi Kid Butai had transmitted a signal advising
Admiral Kakuta and Dai-ni Kid Butai of his position and intentions. After
destroying the enemy task force to the east, he said, he planned to proceed
northward. He instructed Kakuta to rendezvous with him “as soon as possible.”
It would be easy to believe that Kakuta was already moving south at this
very moment. Indeed, Yamamoto’s earlier orders would seemingly have had the
effect of making that force stop in its tracks, come about, and move speedily to
Nagumo’s rescue. In fact, though, Kakuta was at this very moment heading
north, toward Dutch Harbor.
The previous day had seen this force execute a desultory attack on the
American island that had been characterized mostly by foul weather, bad luck,
and poor results. Today, however, Admiral Kakuta had been determined to
renew his efforts starting at around noon. For whatever reason, Yamamoto’s
1220 order to Kakuta was not received until shortly after 1500, meaning that
Kakuta was already committed to his attack on Dutch Harbor when the news
arrived that things were not going well to the south. Kakuta duly sent his reply at
1530 that he would turn his force around as soon as his strike was recovered.9
But before making any sort of a high-speed run, Kakuta would need to refuel his
ships.10 Accordingly, he shaped a course for a meeting with the force’s oilers
some twelve hours hence. Once refueled on the morning of the 5th, he would
begin his long voyage south.

Meanwhile, having gotten his initial report from Lieutenant Hashimoto

regarding the most recent strike against the Americans, Admiral Yamaguchi in
Hiry had no choice but to wait for his torpedo bombers to return. Thereafter, he
already knew what he was going to do, and at 1531 he radioed Nagumo that,
“After definitely establishing contact with our Model 13 experimental ship based
bomber, we plan to direct our entire remaining power (5 bombers, 5 torpedo
planes, and 10 fighters) to attack and destroy the remaining enemy forces in a
dusk engagement.”11 Yamaguchi went on to elaborate a minute later on the
earlier results of Kobayashi’s earlier strike, which he claimed were “five direct
hits [against] an Enterprise-class[carrier] with #25 [semi armor-piercing] bombs,
causing her to break out with big fires. The above carrier and 5 large cruisers
were the only ships sighted at the time of the attack, but according to reports
from [our] Type 13 experimental ship based bomber, there are two additional
carriers about 10 miles away… . The second attack wave took off at 1320, and
the third (6 ship-based bombers and 9 ship-based fighters) are at present
preparing to take off.”12 Thus, Yamaguchi was committing himself and Hiry to
yet another strike without understanding the real results of Tomonaga’s effort.

At 1520 Tone’s No. 4 plane reported on the enemy force he was scouting,
describing it as having six cruisers as its nucleus, accompanied by six destroyers,
and preceded at a distance of twenty miles (!) by a single carrier.13 Again, it is
difficult to explain what Tone No. 4 and Amari thought they were seeing at this
juncture, given that carriers do not typically sail unescorted by themselves. The
only possible explanation is that Tone No. 4 (ducking in and out of clouds) was
not seeing the entire picture.14
Admiral Abe came on the air himself at 1535 to inform Admiral Nagumo
that his No. 5 aircraft had also sighted the enemy force earlier in a position
“bearing 114 degrees, distance 110 miles from us at 1530.” Shortly thereafter,
Chikumaas No. 4 plane announced that he had come up empty on his search line
and was therefore returning home. Having now a fairly good sense as to where
the enemy lay, this wasn’t particularly shocking news. With the Americans
pinned down, Abe was determined to maintain contact with them. At 1537 he
radioed Chikuma to send up a replacement to relieve her No. 5 plane, which had
been aloft since 0938.15 Chikuma No. 5 had not reported in some time, and the
cruiser radioed it at 1540. No reply was heard, of course; Chikuma No. 5 and its
crew were already dead.
Nagumo was concerned by these sighting reports. The range to the
Americans was still apparently opening, and his goal of bringing them to bay in
a surface fight was looking more and more unlikely.16 As a result, Nagumo
decided to change his tactics. Kid Butai would withdraw temporarily to the
northwest as soon as Tomonaga’s strike was recovered. He would then attempt a
final air strike at dusk, followed by a return movement to the east with his
surface forces after darkness had finally fallen.

At 1540 Hiry began landing Lieutenant Tomonaga’s survivors. Nagumo and

Yamaguchi must have observed the proceedings with a definite air of grimness.
As expected, Tomonaga was not among the returning aircraft–that was no
surprise. Worse, only nine of Tomonaga’s sixteen aircraft were returning–four
Zeros and five Type 97s. Of these, two Kank and three Zeros were shot up
beyond repair.17
The details of the mission were soon known to Yamaguchi and his staff.
Tomonaga’s strike, like Kobayashi’s, had started out uneventfully enough.18
After forming up, Tomonaga’s formation had climbed to 13,500 feet (4,000
meters) and set out eastward. Finding the Americans had been surprisingly easy.
Lieutenant Hashimoto, at the lead of the 2nd ch tai, had simply scanned the sea
ahead with his binoculars. At 1430, he was able to discern wakes thirty-five
miles ahead and 10 degrees to the right.19 Hashimoto instructed his pilot, PO1c
Takahashi Toshio, to fly up to the 1st ch tai and Tomonaga. There, the two
lieutenants had quickly conferred via hand signals and decided to head toward
the enemy.
As they drew closer, the collection of distant wakes began resolving
themselves into an enemy task force with a carrier at its center. From what
Tomonaga and Hashimoto could tell, the enemy carrier was uninjured. It
certainly wasn’t burning, and both she and her consorts were making what
appeared to them to be twenty-four knots on a heading of roughly 90 degrees.
Hashimoto and Tomonaga justifiably assumed that this was indeed an
undamaged enemy worthy of their attentions.
What the two flight leaders could not know was that this carrier was, in
reality, Kobayashi’s earlier victim–Yorktown. Though Hiry s kanbaku had left
her burning and largely without power, American damage control had been
superb. Her radar had been repaired, and by 1400 her fires were out. More
important, by 1430 she had brought enough of her boilers back on line to work
back up to nineteen knots–not exactly speedy, but hardly a sitting duck, either.
It was a good thing Yorktown was able to move, because at 1355 her radar
picked up Tomonaga’s incoming flight. Even before the raid warning had come
in, her deck crewmen were already readying her Wildcats, led by the redoubtable
Jimmy Thach, to reinforce the CAP. Her low speed was going to make taking off
a bit trickier, but nobody doubted that they had any real choice except to try.
Now, upon receiving word that another enemy attack was developing,
Yorktown’s fueling system was immediately shut down, and the pilots rushed to
their aircraft. None of the Wildcats had more than twenty-three gallons of fuel,
and two of the ten fighters spotted on the deck were actually judged structurally
incapable of flying. Six more Grummans were already overhead, and four of
these were vectored toward the attack. The remaining pair was held overhead to
cover Thach’s takeoff, which would not be completed before Tomonaga made
his appearance. Meanwhile, Yorktown called for help from TF 16 and was
informed that eight more Wildcats were being sent over.
As it stood, the Japanese overtook Yorktown from the carrier’s port quarter.
Tomonaga began letting down from 4,000 meters in a shallow glide to gain
speed. He then split his formation, ordering Hashimoto’s 2nd ch tai to sweep
ahead of the north edge of the enemy fleet and then work around to the carrier’s
starboard bow. Meanwhile, Tomonaga would lead the 1st ch tai against her port
beam. The escort fighters also split, with Lieutenant Mori’s two-plane sh tai
sticking with Hashimoto, while WO Minegishi’s pair went with Tomonaga.
Yamamoto Akira’s Kaga shotai split the difference between the two kank
groups. At 1434 Tomonaga radioed his force to attack.
The Japanese began shedding altitude rapidly. Thus far they hadn’t
encountered any enemy fighters, but at 1438, just as Tomonaga was passing
through 4,000 feet, his chutai was jumped by a pair of Grummans. They singled
out one of the trailing Kank (probably either WO bayashi Yukio or Sea1c
Suzuki Takeshi’s aircraft) and sent it spinning into the water.20 Fortunately,
Minegishi’s pair of Zeros interceded before the Wildcats could inflict any further
damage. A brief, violent combat ensued, during which both American fighters
were picked off.21

17-2: Tomonaga’s attack on Yorktown.

Breaking out of a cloud bank, Tomonaga and his men could clearly see the
American carrier ahead of them, still some ten miles away. She was turning
away from them and onto a southeast heading, not only to avoid her onrushing
attackers, but also to launch the fighters that could be seen on her deck. Around
her, the American cruisers and destroyers were closed up in a tight ring about
3,000 meters across. At 1440 Tomonaga repeated his earlier message to
Hashimoto, telling the 2nd ch tai to attack from the left as he took his four
remaining planes in.22
The 1st ch tai closed quickly on the target. They were now at a very low
level–200 feet or less–and racing in at nearly 200 knots, a speed that would have
made any Devastator pilot green with envy.23 However, as the 1st ch tai came
within six miles of the formation, the American escorts cut loose with everything
at their disposal. Flashing strings of tracers reached out their deadly fingers to
meet the Japanese pilots, while all around them mushroomed the black puffs of
exploding heavy shells.
Resolutely, Tomonaga drove his men through a gap between heavy cruiser
Pensacola and the destroyer Russell. Bursting into the inner ring, though, he
discovered Yorktown had presented her stern to him. Tomonaga, realizing that
this would present him with an unfavorable target angle, split his forces again.
He sent two aircraft to the left so as to work their way around the carrier’s port
side and gain her bow, while he led his own wingman around the carrier’s
starboard quarter to attempt to come up her other flank. If successful, they would
catch Yorktown between the hammer and tongs.24
It was at this juncture, though, that things began rapidly falling apart for
Hiry ’s hik taich , as the newly launched American fighters quickly made their
presence known. Tomonaga was their first target, the victim of the most famous
American fighter pilot of 4 June–Jimmy Thach. Appearing out of nowhere, the
American ace made a flat run on the hik taich s right side, holing his plane
badly and setting it afire. In a stunning display of airmanship, though, Tomonaga
was able to keep his blazing kank straight and level and delivered a textbook
torpedo drop on Yorktown’s starboard quarter.25 As soon as the fish was away,
Tomonaga’s left wing buckled, sending Hiry s leader slamming into the water
close astern. His torpedo missed.
Tomonaga’s wingman managed to escape his leader’s fate, at least for the
time being. Dropping his torpedo near Tomonaga’s, he turned to fly up
Yorktown’s starboard side. His fish, too, missed the target. Flying low, the kank
continued on through the American formation, broke back out through the
screen, and headed away to the south. Shortly thereafter, though, he ran into a
trio of Grummans coming up from TF 16 and was quickly shot down.26
Meanwhile, the pair of kank that Tomonaga had sent around Yorktown’s
port side had also run into trouble. The first of these had made a beeline up
Yorktown’s flank, intending to round on her port bow and make his drop then. In
the process, the pilot flew almost entirely through the formation and back to the
ring of destroyers in front of Yorktown. Here, though, he had found another
Grumman coming at him head-on, firing. Damaged, the kank jettisoned its fish
and turned for a suicide run against the carrier. But the Wildcat, piloted by Lt.
Bill Leonard, stuck to his tail, firing from below and setting the torpedo plane on
fire. In the end, Leonard brought the kank down, crashing it off Yorktown’s port
bow.
His companion met a similar fate. Another of Yorktown’s Wildcats27 had
braved the storm of antiaircraft fire from his own ships and attacked the
Nakajima from directly behind. It wasn’t enough to prevent the Japanese aviator
from dropping his fish, nor passing close enough to the American ship that her
startled sailors were able to see the plane’s rear gunner stand up and shake his
fist at them.28 It was a last gesture of defiance, though, as the kank exploded
almost instantly thereafter–its fuel tanks detonated by either the Grumman’s
bullets or Yorktown’s own flak. Its fish, too, missed. Thus, Tomonaga’s 1st ch
tai had been wiped out without inflicting any damage on the American carrier.
Hashimoto’s 2nd ch tai, though, fared differently. They were headed in a
“V” toward the gap between heavy cruiser Portland and the destroyer Balch.
Hashimoto took his men down to the deck and roared into the American
formation. The antiaircraft fire that came back at him was stunning in its
magnitude and variety. Everything from machine guns to five-inch flak was
hurtling past him. To Hashimoto, the shrapnel rattling off his wings and fuselage
reminded him of the sound hail made hitting a metal roof back home.29 It was
terrifying, but it didn’t deter him.
Most of the enemy Grummans had been pulled away in pursuit of
Tomonaga’s flight, but not all of them. Fortunately, Hashimoto still had
Lieutenants Mori’s and Yamamoto Toru’s Zeros along with him. When one of
the enemy Wildcats suddenly appeared ahead of them, the two kansen wasted no
time in jumping all over him, leaving Hashimoto’s ch tai to continue speeding
ahead. However, in the process, two more Grummans joined the fight and
shortly flamed both the Hiry Zeros before they even knew they were there,
killing both Mori and his wingman.30
Hashimoto, observing all this from his plane, was sure that he was next. He
banked his formation slightly to the left to take advantage of some cloud cover,
hoping to throw the American fighters off the trail. It was at this moment,
however, that Kaga’s two Zeros, flown by PO1c Yamamoto Akira and PO3c
Bando Makoto, showed up. They initiated an intense low-level engagement with
the Wildcats, which removed the immediate threat from Hashimoto’s ch tai.31
Emerging from his cloud bank, Hashimoto found that his formation had
become jumbled. He was now on the left side of his group instead of leading the
formation. There was little time left to correct these problems, though, as
American flak began thundering at them again as soon as they left the protection
of the clouds. More American fighters shortly appeared, one of them making a
beam run directly at Hashimoto’s plane. But at this point he was close enough to
the target that the Grummans had little chance. Not only that, but he still had
fighter cover. Indeed, just as Hashimoto’s forthcoming attack climaxed, the last
Wildcat off of Yorktown’s flight deck, that of Ens. George Hopper, was set upon
by either Kitani or Minegishi’s Zero and shot down almost as soon as he took
off.32
Pilot Takahashi was now taking Hashimoto’s plane down to within 100 feet
of the water, the flak continuing to explode all around them. The Japanese had a
phrase that crystallized their philosophy regarding torpedo attacks–Nikuhaku-
hitch (“press closely, strike home”). Hashimoto intended to do precisely that.
He knew his torpedoes were deadly, fast, and accurate. All he needed was a
good drop to take this carrier out of the battle. At 600 meters, the lieutenant
released his fish, aiming for the carrier’s midships. Three of his squadron mates
did the same, hoping to concentrate their damage. However, at this critical
juncture, when every piece of ordnance counted, the lone Akagi kank (that of
Warrant Officer Nishimori) suffered a failure in its torpedo release gear! Despite
its crew’s efforts, the fish remained attached to the plane.33

17-3: Hashimoto Toshio, postwar, in the uniform of the Japanese Self-Defense
Forces. (Photo courtesy Michael Wenger)

Having made their drop, there was nothing left to do but run for it.
Hashimoto led his flight across Yorktown’s bow and away to the southeast.
Looking back, he strained for any sign that his torpedoes had found their mark.
Suddenly, one after the other, two enormous geysers lifted their ponderous white
heads over the enemy flight deck. Hashimoto felt a surge of elation–they had
indeed struck home!
By the time he reached the squadron’s rendezvous point, though, it was
clear that the price Hiry had paid for this latest success had once again been
steep. Lieutenant Tomonaga was nowhere to be found, nor was Lieutenant Mori.
Just five kank were left–all from the 2nd ch tai–and four Zeros. Three of the
torpedo planes were so badly shot up it seemed unlikely they would make it
home, let alone be of further use in the battle. If this was victory, it was the sort
of victory Hiry could ill afford. Hashimoto dutifully radioed his assessment of
the attack back to the flagship at 1445.34
The 2nd ch tai’s torpedoes did tremendous damage to Yorktown.35 The first
slammed home at Frame 90, knocking three boilers off line at once. Steam
pressure immediately fell and the carrier listed 6 degrees to port, but Yorktown
had continued swerving to port and remained underway. For about thirty seconds
there was some chance of minimizing the damage, and orders were being given
to the forward generator room to shift oil to starboard tanks so as to correct the
list. However, just as these orders were being given, the second torpedo struck a
bit forward of the first, at Frame 75. This second hit was a real haymaker,
instantly flooding the forward generator room and killing power throughout the
entire ship. Though the ship’s emergency generator did kick in, an unlucky short
circuit took it off line immediately. Since Yorktown was already turning, this loss
of power jammed her helm 15 degrees to port. The big carrier rapidly coasted to
a stop and began heeling further to port as water poured into her hull.36

17-4: Decisive damage to Yorktown. Despite the heavy flak surrounding the
carrier, the second of the Hashimoto ch tai’s torpedoes strikes home against
Yorktown’s port side. This hit knocked out the ship’s power plant, preventing the
rapid counterflooding needed to correct the sharp list resulting from the two hits
on the port side. Flooding and loss of power contributed greatly to the decision
subsequently to abandon ship. (Naval Historical Center)

The second hit had damaged her forward pumps as well, making
counterflooding impossible. As a result, Yorktown’s list grew worse, to the point
where just standing on the flight deck became difficult. Within seventeen
minutes, her list reached 23 degrees. Yorktown’s skipper, Captain Elliott
Buckmaster, was rightly concerned that she would capsize, which would
inevitably lead to a heavy loss of life among his crew, particularly those still
belowdecks at their battle stations. To prevent such a catastrophe, Buckmaster
reluctantly began ordering his crew over the side at about 1500.37 Hashimoto’s
group, in a brilliantly executed attack, had precisely accomplished their intent to
concentrate torpedo damage amidships. Though it had taken two strikes to do it,
Yorktown was now finally, definitively, out of the battle.

Once Hashimoto had been debriefed, at 1600, Yamaguchi dutifully reported the
results of the strike up to Nagumo, stating, “Two certain torpedo hits on an
Enterprise-class carrier (not the same one as reported bombed).”38 CarDiv 2’s
leader followed up half an hour later with another message to Nagumo that Hiry
s third attack wave would “take off at 1800 to engage the enemy at dusk” and
went on to request that the force’s float recon planes maintain contact with the
enemy.39 Though Yamaguchi still sought to attack, Nagumo was now finally
inclined to start getting Hiry out of the danger zone. At 1550 he had received
word from Tone’s No. 4 plane of two enemy carriers with two escorts. It
appeared that despite Hashimoto’s best efforts, at least two enemy flattops
remained operational. With the odds not getting perceptibly better, and Hiry s
second strike home, it was time to start opening the range. Thus, as soon as Hiry
had recovered her aircraft, she began her belated retreat to the northwest,
turning to course 315 and ringing up twenty-eight knots.40
At the same time, Nagumo was still trying to assess if there was any hope
of retrieving at least some of the burning carriers and shepherd them from the
battlefield. To that effect, he sent a message to the commander of Destroyer
Division (DesDiv) 4 at 1600 that he should make every effort to escort the
damaged vessels and retire to the northwest.41 However, by this time, neither
Akagi, Kaga, nor S ry had been mobile for the better part of three hours, Kaga
having been the last to lose power. For its part, DesDiv 4 remained silent,
perhaps unwilling to dispel the admiral’s hopes in the matter. The three towering
smoke columns still visible on the horizon behind Nagara ought to have been
testament enough as to the reality of the situation.
A half hour later, with Hashimoto’s strike now recovered, Nagumo felt
even more strongly that Hiry needed to be opening the range and hightailing it
west toward Yamamoto and Kond . At 1630, even as Yamaguchi announced
plans for a third attack and asked for increased scouting, Nagumo ordered
Mobile Fleet to come hard left to a due west course.42

Unbeknownst to Yamaguchi and Nagumo, even as Hashimoto had landed,

American retribution for Yorktown’s crippling was already forming up and
heading for Hiry . As soon as Lieutenant Adams’s sighting report had come in
at 1445, TF 16 had begun readying for a strike. Enterprise immediately began
spotting a composite dive-bomber group composed of both her own aircraft and
those of Yorktown. All told, there were fifteen aircraft from Yorktown’s
Bombing Three, joined by seven aircraft from Scouting Six and four from
Bombing Six. All were under the command of Lieutenant Gallaher.43 At 1525
“The Big ‘E’” turned into the wind and began launching.44
Meanwhile, the disjointed nature of Hornets flight operations continued.
She, too, had monitored Lieutenant Adams’s transmission and had dutifully
spotted her own strike force at 1456.45 However, not having received any orders
from Enterprise (TF 16’s flagship) with regards to an impending strike, Hornet
had broken her spot at about 1510 to recover her VB-8 SBDs that had previously
landed on Midway, as well as seven CAP fighters. The result was that when
Enterprise signaled at 1517 that she would begin launching at 1530, Hornets
Captain Marc Mitscher was caught flat-footed.46
Hurriedly respotting the deck, Hornet managed to put up sixteen SBDs
under the command of Lt. Edgar E. Stebbins by 1600.47 At that point, though,
Enterprises aircraft were already heading out to the target. Hornet therefore cut
her launch short, sending Stebbins chasing after the Enterprise strike.48 Several
of Hornets SBDs, despite being warmed up and ready to go, were left sitting in
the hangar, much to the disgust of their aviators. Thus, once again the Americans
had squandered an opportunity to put together a coordinated multicarrier strike.
In the end, though, none of the confusion on board Hornet detracted from the
material point–that at this stage of the battle both of TF 16’s carriers individually
possessed sufficient force to overwhelm Hiry s feeble remaining defenses.

This phase of the battle was also a busy one for the Japanese scouting planes,
which were continuing to send back information on American fleet movements.
At 1545, Tone No. 3 sighted “what appears to be 6 enemy cruisers in position
bearing 94 degrees, distance 117 miles from my take off point. Enemy is on
course 120 degrees, speed 24 knots.”49 This was followed just five minutes later
by a new report from Tone No. 4, advising that the enemy fleet contained “two
carriers” accompanied by destroyers–clearly a reference to TF 16. CruDiv 8’s
two ships were busily supporting these efforts. Chikuma was in the process of
getting ready to launch yet another follow-up scouting mission with her No. 2
aircraft (a Type 95),50 which went up at 1606.51
For their part, the American CAP fighters were putting the heat on the
Japanese recon birds, aided by their carriers’ radars. At 1610 the hard-worked
Tone No. 4 had reported that he was being pursued by American fighters and
was homeward bound.52 Indeed, a section of Yorktown’s Grummans attacked
both of Tone’s Nos. 3 and 4 planes at this time. Tone No. 4 managed to scoot
into cloud cover and make her way out of the area, partly because the Wildcats
chasing Amari suffered from jamming guns and low ammunition.53 Tone No. 3,
however, was not so lucky, being downed at 1633.54 Once again, there were no
survivors.

In the meantime, Kid Butai’s reconnaissance efforts were again being

augmented by yet more captured American aviators. A little after 1630, after
having turned west, Nagara spotted a mysterious red object in the water and
apparently jogged northward to investigate it.55 It turned out to be a life raft,
from which destroyer Makigumo shortly rescued two fliers from Scouting Six–
Ens. Frank W O’Flaherty and his gunner, AMM2c Bruno P. Gaido. After
bombing Kaga earlier in the morning, Flaherty had exited the battle area to the
northeast with Ware’s section, but had run out of gas on the return home. It was
their misfortune to be spotted after Hiry s westward turn. Though initially
treated well, they were predictably subjected to a threatening interrogation. The
two yielded accurate details concerning Midway, but nothing of value on the
American carriers. Like Ensign Osmus before them, these prisoners were
eventually executed.56
By 1655 Admiral Abe in Tone felt that he had a good enough sense of the
enemy’s composition to send Nagumo a surprisingly accurate appraisal of the
latest spotting intelligence. He reported that by “Coordinating various reports,
the large enemy force is apparently composed of 2 carriers and 6 large cruisers
accompanied by about 8 destroyers. Two float recco planes have been sent to
obtain more intelligence.”57
Simultaneously, Combined Fleet flagship Yamato made her helpful
presence known once again, as Admiral Ugaki sent a message to his counterpart
on Nagumo’s staff, Admiral Kusaka, as well as Admirals Yamaguchi and Abe,
asking them to “report progress of attacks on Midway (particularly whether or
not friendly units will be able to use shore bases on Midway tomorrow …).”58
At the moment, Yamamoto and his staff still allowed themselves a guarded
optimism. Though roughly handled, Nagumo’s force was apparently still in the
fight. Hiry was even now probably in the midst of launching a third strike
against the enemy carriers. Though its chances for success seemed slim,
Yamaguchi had apparently already crippled at least two of the enemy’s carriers.
Come nightfall, Hiry with the rest of Nagumo’s force would shape course to
rendezvous with Kond ’s onrushing fleet, which in turn would be joined the
following morning by the massed force of the Main Body itself. If all went well,
a reasonable semblance of a Combined Fleet would be deployed to cover the
renewal of the landing operations. Whatever American carriers remained could
be brought to bay by the fleet’s powerful battleships and cruisers, while Hiry s
remaining aircraft provided the necessary combat air patrol cover.
The fantastical nature of the 1655 message demonstrated just how out of
touch Yamamoto and his staff were. Just as at Coral Sea, where Combined Fleet
headquarters had soundly rebuked Admiral Takagi for a perceived lack of
offensive spirit (despite the fact that both his carriers had been effectively
knocked out of action), so now the dull displeasure of Combined Fleet’s staff
could be detected from afar. Blissfully ignorant, or simply unwilling to admit the
true nature of the combat conditions then pertaining, and physically located so as
to be of no use whatsoever to the ongoing operation, Yamamoto’s staff was
clearly having difficulty coming to grips with reality. This trend would only get
worse as the evening continued.
By 1640 the situation on board Kaga finally reached the point where further
firefighting was useless. The truth was that there was very little left of the ship to
save by this time–eight hours of fire and explosions had left her a gutted shell.
Commander Amagai correctly realized that staying on board simply meant
condemning more of Kaga’s crew to a pointless death. He ordered Kaga
abandoned and the remainder of the crew to be taken on board the destroyers.59
On board Hagikaze’s sister Maikaze, her skipper, Cdr. Nagasuki Seiji,
continued watching Kaga burn with awed dismay. “She was a huge bonfire.
There, surrounded among the flames, stood the bridge looking like a volcano
that had melted down; a lava slag.”60 Given this, it was understandable that
Commander Nagasuki looked with incredulity on a message from Yamamoto
himself, asking him “to determine if Kaga can be towed,” and to advise his
superiors of her condition. Nagasuki replied with blunt clarity, saying it was
“simply impossible.” It’s not clear if Yamamoto received this, but apparently
Nagumo did, for he subsequently radioed Yamato at 1700, “Kaga is
inoperational in position HE EA 55. Survivors transferred to DDs.”61
S ry s condition at this point was much the same as Kaga’s, with many
men already in the water. Still, survivors clustered on both extremities of the
ship. As the afternoon wore on, the decision was evidently made to remove these
men as well. S ry s destroyers, which had apparently been hanging off a good
distance from the stricken vessel during this phase of the battle, now began their
recovery operations in earnest again.62
On S ry s anchor deck, Commander Kanao noticed a ship approaching at
high speed. Incredibly, for a moment, Kanao wondered if it were an enemy.
Given the condition of S ry , should he kill himself to escape the shame of
capture? But he carried no pistol, the way the pilots did, so there was no way to
do the deed. Suddenly, he remembered that the forward AA guns were still in
order. If it was an enemy warship, they could at least fight back and die like
warriors. He immediately ordered, “Gunners, man your battle stations!” As the
other vessel closed, though, he and the men were relieved to see that she flew the
Imperial Navy’s ensign. It was Hamakaze. With tears in their eyes, the men on
the foredeck waved their caps at the destroyer.63
Hamakaze stopped several hundred meters away and started to signal them.
Not having a signalman in their ranks made deciphering the message difficult,
but Kanao finally made out that the tin can was ordering them to abandon ship.
Simultaneously, the destroyer lowered one of her cutters.
Kanao managed to flag back: “Our ship is disabled. We want to remain on
board.”
Hamakaze answered quickly, “Enemy carriers are approaching. Abandon
ship immediately!’
Kanao thought that Hamakaze must be mistaken, or that he had read the
signals wrong. Nevertheless, in short order the cutter was alongside and the
destroyermen began urging the crew on the bow to abandon ship. Kanao was
torn. He was not convinced that the enemy was approaching. Yet, Yanagimoto
had ordered the ship abandoned as well, and if they remained there, they might
well be hindering Hamakaze in continuing the fight. Some of the other sailors
opined that if the situation on board S ry improved, perhaps they could reboard
the carrier. Finally, seeing no other way out, Kanao and the men cheered “S ry
–Banzai!” three times and started to load their wounded onto the boat.
At the same time Hamakaze was sending over her boat, Chikumaas cutter
(which had been left behind to render assistance to the stricken carrier), was still
trolling about and plucking survivors out of the water. Hamakaze eventually
picked them up after they had finished their work, and at 1802 the boat was cut
loose and abandoned.64 As far as the destroyers could tell, they had now gotten
everybody off the ship that could be rescued.
Yet even now, there were apparently still men on board S ry . Deep in her
hull, the final fate of the engine room crews had been grimly unfolding for some
time.65 The temperature had by now soared well beyond the point where humans
could stay alive for any length of time. Engineering Lieutenant Naganuma was
dizzy, and several of the sailors around him were squatting on the deck plates.
As one such man crouched at Naganuma’s feet, he shouted at him, “Hey, come
on, we are in a battle!” He kicked at the man’s legs to rouse him back to his post.
But the sailor no longer moved.
Naganuma was streaming with sweat. He tried to keep drinking, but almost
instantly he would be thirsty again. Soon, the drinking water was exhausted. The
men were sweating rivers. One of them said, “Well, it’s unavoidable. We must
drink the water from the fukusuiki (the water recovery plant for the boilers).”
Desperately, they began pouring the distilled boiler feedwater into cups for the
men, who greedily lapped it up. To Naganuma, the water made him feel uneasy
in his gut.
An engineer that he knew, who was usually quite diligent, stepped up to
Naganuma. In the dim battle lighting, he looked half-mad.
“Kikaich (head of machinery), I have a favor to ask.”
“What is it?” Naganuma replied.
“I borrowed 2 yen 50 sen from a petty officer in the starboard engine room,
but I haven’t returned it,” the sailor said. “I don’t know how he is now, but the
money is in my private box, so could you please give it back to him, sir?”
Naganuma was taken aback by the enlisted man’s request. “What are you
talking about?” he snapped. “We are in battle now! Do it after it’s finished.”
“No, Kikaich I am no longer all right.” And without another word, the
man fell to the deck to lie beside Naganuma’s feet. The lieutenant simply stood
there, paralyzed. It was clear that, distilled water or not, the conditions in the
engine rooms were going to kill them all, as the temperature literally headed for
the boiling point. Many of the men were already dead or dying from the
appalling heat and smoke. But what was there to do? The passages topside were
all aflame, with the hangar deck above them a mass of fire.
Finally, someone spoke up, “Hey, let’s go through the double hull!”
Naganuma followed three or four men to a service manhole that led down below
the engine deck plates to a crawl space in the bilges. There was already seawater
down there, and as the men crawled in the water came up to their heads. For a
while they simply crouched there, not knowing what to do. At least it was
cooler.
After a time, Naganuma became perplexed. “Hey, something is odd,” he
remarked.
His senior engineman, Ensign Iizuka, who had yet to enter the pool below
the floorplates, was writing down the names of those who had fallen and their
last words in a notebook. He looked up from his scribing. “What is it, sir?”
“Well, look at this depth meter,” Naganuma said.
He pointed out the graduation, which showed by how many feet below the
waterline the bottom of the double hull was located. “It looks like the level has
deepened.” There was no question; S ry appeared to be taking on water. It
wasn’t a lot yet, since the crawl space was still not completely full. But it
seemed impossible to exit that way by crawling forward through the bilges, since
who knew if the space would fill further while they were exiting?
Iizuka said, “Well, it cannot be helped. Shall we try topside again?”
Naganuma had no response. Communications with the bridge had been totally
terminated long before. If there had been an order to abandon ship, Naganuma
had never heard it. Even the emergency lights had now gone dark. Despairing of
progressing further into the water-filled crawl way, Naganuma’s party now crept
dripping out of the ship’s bilges and made their way back into the infernal heat
of the engine spaces. With the help of a hand light, they tried to evacuate upward
through another waterproof hatch. However, try as they might, it would not
budge. Naganuma cursed the door’s design. Then, one of the men noticed a dim
light coming down from abovedecks. The enginemen moved forward to see what
it might be. Coming nearer, they could see that an explosion or bomb had blown
a hole through the top of their prison. Just beyond, a companionway ran upward
toward freedom. But the exit at the top was ringed with fire. For the moment at
least, there seemed no way out.

On Hiry , preparations for Yamaguchi’s dusk strike were already under way.
Convinced (with reason) that his aircraft had badly damaged two of the
American carriers, Yamaguchi was determined to attack the third. Unfortunately,
he now had practically nothing left with which to do it. He was down to just four
serviceable dive-bombers and five torpedo planes, plus S ry s D4Y, which was
intended for scouting. Nevertheless, he was planning on getting in one last blow
at dusk, when the Americans would hopefully be less wary, and with a smaller
CAP overhead. Lieutenant Hashimoto would be in charge of the effort.66
The planes were not yet on deck, though, and would not be spotted for
another half hour or so.67 Yamaguchi had hoped to launch earlier, at 1630, and
Captain Kaku had apparently begun the briefing process, only to have it all
called off as the result of an intriguing episode. Kaku could see that many of the
aviators were on their last legs as a result of the day’s constant flight operations.
As a result, he ordered stimulants distributed to them. There had been a mix-up
in getting the pills, mysteriously labeled “Aviation Tablet A,” up from the sick
bay. The aviation mechanic who had been sent below to fetch them brought back
a bottle of tablets, which hik ch Kawaguchi thought looked suspiciously like
sleeping tablets. Captain Kaku thereupon flew into a towering rage at the
unlucky mechanic. A quick call down to the infirmary confirmed that “Aviation
Tablet A” was indeed correct. But the incident demonstrated that everyone’s
nerves were frayed, not least the captain’s. Yamaguchi thereupon decided to
push things back ninety minutes and use the lull to feed Hiry s crew. None of
the aviators had even had lunch yet. The strike leader, Lieutenant Hashimoto,
was too tired to eat–he simply went back down to the ready room and fell asleep
on one of the brown leather couches.68
Overhead circled thirteen Zeros, the majority having just been launched at
1627–a composite group of seven S ry and Kaga planes, led by Kaga’s Lt.
Iizuka Masao. They joined four Akagi fighters under Lt. Shirane Ayao, and a
pair of Kaga birds as well. The disposition of these fighters is unknown,
although judging by the composition of the group as a whole, they were likely
roaming about in two-and three-plane shotai, covering different quadrants of the
formation. It seems clear, too, that some of the aircraft at least were stacked at
different altitudes–somebody on Hiry (likely Captain Kaku or hik ch
Kawaguchi) had learned their lesson with regards to American dive-bombers. By
this time, the force’s cruisers and battleships had all joined up with Hiry . The
heavy units were in their accustomed positions, with BatDiv 3 in the starboard
column, and CruDiv 8 to the port, all spread widely around Hiry .69 Nagara’s
position was in the van.
Hiry s final test was not long in coming, as Enterprise’s composite air
group was now close by. Enterprise’s Lieutenant Gallaher had spotted Hiry at
1645, after first flying north of the burning hulks of the carriers he had helped
destroy in the morning. With Hiry s formation discernible ahead at a range of
forty miles, Gallaher had begun gradually letting down from 19,000 feet in
preparation for initiating his attack run.70 As he did so, passing the formation’s
port side, he circled to the west, so as to attack out of the sun. He ordered
Bombing Six’s aircraft to follow his Scouting Six aircraft in attacking the enemy
carrier. Yorktown’s Bombing Three (under Lt. DeWitt Wood Shumway) was
slated to attack “the nearer battleship”–Haruna–which was ahead and to
starboard of the CV.
Despite the better CAP arrangements, the Japanese apparently did not
receive adequate warning of this incoming attack, either. The position of the sun
certainly had something to do with this, but so, too, did the fact that the
remaining CAP pilots were undoubtedly just as exhausted as the deckhands on
board Hiry . So it was that Admiral Yamaguchi’s flagship did not notice the
enemy aircraft over her until 1701, three minutes after Gallaher had begun a
shallow descent to his pushover point.71
As it happened, just before at 1656, Nagumo had signaled his force,
ordering “Turn to course 120 degrees, speed 24 knots.” Nagumo’s order was not
intended as an evasive maneuver, but rather an intentional change in base course,
confirmed by radio from Tone to CruDiv 8 and the battleship’s planes at 1700.72
It may have been related to the seaplane recovery operations that were soon to
follow, or (less likely) to the planned launch of S ry s recon plane, but this is
not clear.73 Regardless of why it occurred, Nagumo’s last-minute maneuver had
the effect of bringing Kid Butai into a sharp turn just as the Enterprise’s SBDs
began their dives. This may have further amplified Hiry s already well-
documented evasive skills.
Some 5,000 meters off Hiry s starboard bow, Chikuma had just completed
her turn to the east at 1701 when she spotted Gallaher’s bombers as they were
about to push over.74 Behind her, Tone saw Shumway’s group three minutes
later and cranked her guns around to port as fast as she could to engage the
enemy. But once again, the heavy units that might have been able to contribute
some volume of fire to Hiry s defense were too far away to really do anything
meaningful.
For her part, as soon as the Dauntlesses were sighted, Hiry immediately
began putting up antiaircraft fire. Simultaneously, Captain Kaku ordered his
speedy carrier to continue her hard port turn, bringing her bow around into his
assailants.75 This forced the Americans into steeper dives to compensate for Hiry
scooting out of sight beneath their engine cowlings. The combination of heavy
antiaircraft fire and a very speedy ship made this the toughest target the
Americans had faced all day. The fact, too, that Hiry s CAP was at altitude
meant that they could also make their presence known. The Zeros slashed
frantically at the attacking SBDs, knowing full well that it was now do or die–if
Hiry was taken down, they would have no place to land and no hope left in the
battle. The American pilots were amazed to see Zeros following them all the
way down, performing acrobatic maneuvers worthy of an air show in their
attempts to deflect this final attack. Two SBDs were hit in their dives and slanted
into the water.76

17-5: Decisive attack on Hiry at 1701–1710 by VB-6/VS-6.

It would seem that Captain Kaku’s radical turn, as well as the efforts of
fighter leaders Shirane and Iizuka, did at least some good.77 The first few bombs
from Gallaher’s section missed their target. Not surprisingly for a composite air
group composed of aviators from two carriers, the American attack suffered
from a lack of coordination. To the westward, Yorktown’s aircraft were already
on their way toward Haruna, but the pilots could clearly see the large white
columns of misses erupting around the elusive Hiry . Upon seeing this,
Lieutenant Shumway’s section, followed by all but the last of the Yorktown
sections designated for Haruna, made a snap decision to attack Hiry instead.78
Or at least that is what Shumway subsequently claimed in his report. However,
the near-simultaneous timing of his section’s attack suggests that he had made
the bold, if somewhat subversive decision to disregard Gallaher’s earlier
assignments well before observing the results of his superior’s attack. In the
process, however, Shumway’s group passed directly in front of Lt. Dick Best’s
VB-6 aircraft, who were just beginning their own dives. For the second time this
day, Best was left with no choice but to reef his men back upward again.
Unfortunately, not only did this spoil their initial attack run, but it had the effect
of stringing them out in the face of Hiry s Zeros. In an instant, Best’s wingman,
Ens. Fred Weber, was shot out of the air and killed. As soon as Yorktown’s
aircraft were out of the way, Best lost no time pushing over again with his
remaining three aircraft.79
Hiry was now on the receiving end of an attack much like Kaga’s. She
was committed to her left-hand evasive turn and had too many enemies overhead
and too little antiaircraft fire to deal with them. Her Zeros, though valiant, were
outnumbered by the SBDs. And with deadeyes like Dick Best interspersed
throughout the three distinct packs now hurtling downward on her, the final
results were likewise all but inevitable. The first hit was probably delivered by
Shumway himself and was followed in quick succession by three more. All of
them were 1,000 pounders, and all landed on the forward third of the flight
deck.80 This is particularly intriguing in light of the fact that several of the
American aviators commented afterward that they had used Hiry s hinomaru as
a convenient aiming point.
The results could hardly have been more appalling for the Japanese. Hiry s
flight deck was blown upward by the detonations, then collapsed down upon
itself as the hammer blows continued. Heavy fires broke out at once. Anyone in
the forward hangar, where nineteen Zeros were currently stowed, would have
been killed instantly. Even more spectacular, one of the bombs also smashed into
Hiry s forward elevator, chopping the lift into pieces and hurling one large
portion against the front of her island.81 The bridge windows were smashed,
flinging Captain Kaku and everyone else to the deck. Astern and one deck
below, Commander Kawaguchi was blown completely off the air-control
platform at the back of the island and onto the flight deck.82 Standing nearby
was his assistant, WO Arimura Yoshikazu, Hiry ’s bomber maintenance chief.
Arimura was badly wounded on his left side by the blast, suffering a broken jaw,
punctured lung, and multiple fractures in his left leg. He collapsed in a heap on
the air platform.83 Kawaguchi himself was amazingly unhurt, and was just
picking himself back up from the flight deck when another bomb landed.84

17-6: Hit locations on Hiry .

Down in the ship’s port after engine room, an ensign named Mandai had heard
the bugles sound over the intercom, meaning an air action was underway. Then
he heard the first bomb land. This was no near miss alongside, as the force of the
detonation pushed down directly on the ship, rather than shoving it laterally.
Then more hits. The lights went out, and the battle lighting came on. Almost
immediately, though, smoke began pouring through the engine room ventilators.
A pair of ratings who had just gone above to get food for the engine room crews
hurriedly scurried back below–the spaces above were already afire.85
Nevertheless, in the main engineering control room, Chief Engineer Aimune
Kunize maintained the ship under way. Although the hatchways to the other
machinery spaces were blocked, he soon had a minor blaze in No. 4 engine room
extinguished and had reestablished communications with the other engineers.86
Aimune had no intention of bringing Hiry to a halt before he was told to.
Indeed, Captain Kaku urged him to give him everything he had, so as to drive
Hiry out of the battle area as quickly as possible.
In the ready room below the island, torpedo aviator Hashimoto was still
catnapping when he was thrown off of his couch by the first detonation, then
was knocked to the deck again as the bombing continued. The ready room
quickly began filling with smoke. Hashimoto ran toward a patch of light, which
turned out to be an opening made by one of the explosions. The reason for the
light now became evident–the space beyond was already catching fire. He
crawled on his hands and knees through the compartment, grateful for the gloves
on his hands. Sparks and burning ashes were falling on him. His hair began to
smolder. Groping his way through the rapidly gathering smoke, he encountered
another sailor, who offered him a gas mask. Even half-burned as it was, it was
still better protection than nothing.87
Finally making his way up to the flight deck, Hashimoto gazed in
amazement at the wreck of the elevator, standing almost at attention as it leaned
against the island.88 To the wounded Arimura, also lying nearby, the now-
vertical lift reminded him of the sails of a sailing ship.89 Hashimoto was
immediately pressed into service by Hiry s executive officer, who ordered
everyone in the vicinity to begin cutting loose the hammock mantelets from
around the bridge.90 They served no more use now and were sure to catch on
fire.
This much must be said for Hiry –her damage-control parties were prompt
and fairly efficient. By some miracle she still had one of her fire mains
working91 and parties began making their way forward at once, reeling the hoses
out from the crew pockets along the sides of the flight deck. Lying where he was
amidst the wreckage and dead and injured crewmen, Arimura could do nothing
to assist the crewmen. He couldn’t even move. And all the while the flames were
getting closer. Suddenly, a sailor came along and picked him up from amid the
carnage and began carrying him up the companionway onto the bridge. Thinking
better of this, though, the rating instead turned around and made for the flight
deck, where they were both knocked over by overeager sailors plying their
hoses. Arimura was intensely irritated, but could do little about it. He was
dumped on the flight deck farther aft.
Those few American dive-bombers who had not yet committed to their
dives were now picking out new targets. From where they sat, Hiry was
obviously finished. As a result, several bombers scooted over to attack battleship
Haruna instead. The fast battlewagon, however, remained as wily as ever and
avoided anything more serious than a pair of near misses.
Hiry continued racing blindly forward at thirty knots, smoke streaming
from her bow down the length of her flight deck. Captain Kaku had no real
choice in the matter–as long as the dive-bomber attack was ongoing, he needed
to keep Hiry moving at her best speed. However, a thirty-knot wind over the
bow had the effect of fanning the flames toward the stern and making
firefighting efforts even more difficult. Worse yet, almost as soon as the first
group of American dive-bombers finished with Hiry , at 1720 another group
showed up.
This was Hornets late-launching SBD contingent. Fortunately for Hiry ,
they, too, could see that diving on her was a waste of time–the carrier was
aflame practically stem to stern. As a result, they focused their efforts on Tone
and Chikuma instead.92 Apparently, Japanese battleships and heavy cruisers
were immune to damage this day, though given that they were hardly smaller or
speedier than ships like Hiry , the futility of the American attacks appears to
make little sense. Nevertheless, Tone and Chikuma garnered little more than a
bucket of near misses from their encounter with Hornet’s fourteen aviators.
Thus, Hornet’s misery for this day was complete–her torpedo squadron wiped
out, her dive-bomber and fighter squadrons badly depleted, and not so much as a
single hit on an enemy vessel to show for it. It had indeed been a dismal combat
debut for the most recent American carrier to join the Pacific Fleet.
Ten minutes after Hornets planes departed, the final U.S. air attacks of this
long and costly day began rolling in. Chikuma sighted them first, at 1742–large,
four-engined shapes. Lt. Col. Sweeney’s B-17s were back, for the second time
this day. He had only six aircraft with him this time, but propitiously he
approached the battlefield at the same time as a separate flight of six Flying
Fortresses from Barking Sands airfield in Hawaii showed up, under the
command of Major George A. Blakey.93 Blakey had been sent up to reinforce
Midway’s depleted air group, only to be told just before landing on the island
that he should instead fly to the northwest and attack the fourth Japanese carrier.
His group had been low on fuel, but he had complied. They also didn’t have the
gas necessary to make it up to a proper altitude, so they stuck to a comparatively
low altitude of 3,600 feet.94 Despite being the first to attack, two of Sweeney’s
planes failed to drop during their initial runs and, coming around to make a
second pass, were actually the last to release their weapons this evening. Thus,
Sweeney and Blakey didn’t exactly attack in concert, but the Japanese could
hardly tell the difference.
 The results were the same as the earlier B-17 attacks; namely, nothing. The
bombers droned overhead, the Japanese barked back at them, and the bombs all
fell in the water. Chikuma reported bombs dropped astern of her at 1745, and
more landing off her port side at 1749.95 However, Blakey’s element gave Hiry
a scare. Hikocho Kawaguchi, standing on the blazing carrier’s flight deck, stared
back goggle-eyed as they thundered in at low altitude at 1815–the big Boeings
were quite a sight! Once again their bombs went into the drink, this time about
500 meters away from the ship.96 But these particular B-17s were low enough to
strafe, and their intense .50-caliber machine gun fire managed to knock out one
of Hiry s antiaircraft batteries, killing several gunners in the process.
Thereupon, Sweeney and Blakey swung their bombers for home, although not in
any organized fashion.97 Chikuma did not log the last of them as departing until
1832.98
As the American aircraft began retreating, some of them being chased out
of the area by the remaining Zeros, the Japanese fighter pilots’ moods were
grim. They knew that they would be facing a water landing sometime in the
reasonably proximate future. Hiry would never handle another airplane. One by
one, the Japanese fighters returned, continuing to fly their sad patrols above their
burning carrier. Hiry raced northwest, wreathed in smoke and flames.
18

Scuttlings–1800–Dawn, 5 June

Hiry ’s bombing did not spell the end of combat operations this day, but it
did mark a watershed moment for the Americans, wherein they could switch
their focus from gaining victory to consolidating their gains. As the reports of
the successful attack came back to TF 16 and 17, Admirals Frank Jack Fletcher
and Raymond Spruance began considering what actions were needed to
conclude the day’s activities. For Fletcher, the immediate priority was what to do
with the crippled Yorktown. By 1639 all her survivors had been removed–a
remarkably fast evacuation. She now lay dark and silent. Evening was coming,
and the prospect of the Japanese attempting to force a night action was not lost
on the commander of TF 17. Yorktown was a sitting duck. Given that Japanese
search aircraft were in the area, it seemed reasonable to suppose that their
warships would come gunning for her if given the chance. Six of his destroyers
were packed with survivors, making their participation in any surface action
problematic at best. Wisely, Fletcher chose to vacate the area with all of his
warships and move closer to Spruance’s formation. At 1732 Astoria led the rest
of Yorktown’s escorts away from her, though at 1800 he ordered destroyer
Hughes to return once more to the derelict.1 Hughes mission was to stand by
Yorktown throughout the night and sink her if need be to prevent her being
captured or boarded.2 If all went well, Fletcher would return for her in the
morning. He had radioed Hawaii to send a fleet tug to her assistance. But the
sight of Yorktown, forlorn and listing, dwindling against the horizon, was one
that saddened many of the men crowded on board TF 17’s decks. Yorktown had
fought bravely, and she didn’t deserve to end up this way; abandoned, a castoff.
Leaving her to her fate was a bitter pill to swallow
Beyond Yorktown’s disposition, Fletcher also had to decide how best to
prosecute the battle. TF 17’s power projection capability was now nil, and his
ability to exercise tactical command over TF 16 was severely hampered.
Therefore, when Spruance dutifully asked his superior for further instructions,
Fletcher graciously replied that he had none, and that he would conform to
Spruance’s movements.3 Fletcher had, in effect, told his subordinate to fight the
battle as he saw fit–a profoundly selfless and practical act on the part of the
senior American admiral.
Spruance, for his part, wisely wanted no part of a night battle with the
Japanese. The day’s events had turned out remarkably well for the Americans,
but Spruance was also cognizant of the heavy cost that victory had extracted.
Yorktown was crippled, the air groups badly depleted, and the torpedo squadrons
practically wiped out. Spruance knew that the Japanese probably outgunned him
in surface forces and would be itching to even the score. He knew that at last
report, the Japanese invasion forces to the west were still bearing down on the
island. Furthermore, he had no idea whether he had accounted for all the
Japanese carriers in the neighborhood. While none of his sighting reports thus
far had betrayed the presence of any more than four carriers, intelligence reports
prior to the battle had indicated the Japanese might use as many as five flight
decks.4 Indeed, the fact that some of Sweeney’s B-17s had been set upon by
Zeros well after Hiry had been bombed might indicate that the enemy had
another carrier.5
Furthermore, no one knew what tomorrow might bring and whether or not
they would have to fend off yet more Japanese attacks on the island. To do that,
he needed to preserve his remaining strength at all costs. This was no time for
rashness. Charging west after the enemy, despite the fact that the Japanese had
been badly beaten, could offer Spruance nothing that was worth the risk of
jeopardizing either of his remaining carriers. Accordingly, he determined that
after recovering aircraft (which would be completed by about 1915), he would
move east until midnight. Thereafter, he would turn north for an hour, and then
return west as the night waned. According to his logic, he would thereby
preserve his standoff distance to the Japanese but also be in a position to support
Midway by daybreak.
Spruance was subsequently criticized for his perceived lack of aggression in
following up his victory as promptly as possible. In so doing, the logic goes, he
missed opportunities for attacking Yamamoto’s Main Body or Kond ’s support
forces, both of which he might have been engaged had they been closer the
following day. Such criticisms not only ignore the fact that the information
Spruance had at his disposal was far from perfect, but they also ignore the
primary aim of Chester Nimitz’s battle plan–to destroy the Japanese carrier fleet.
This Fletcher and Spruance had achieved. At this juncture, the only way
Yamamoto or Kond ’s forces could reverse the verdict of the day was if
Spruance allowed them to, by blundering under their guns. Spruance had won air
supremacy for the U.S. Navy and thereby owned the initiative. No Japanese
force in the vicinity, no matter how powerfully armed, had the ability to force
the issue, so long as Spruance kept them at arm’s length. His movement east
guaranteed that he would retain his current advantages. By so doing, he wisely
sealed his victory over the Japanese.

Much like Admiral Fletcher, around 1800 Admiral Nagumo was faced with a
very difficult decision: what should be done with the burning carriers? The
conventional wisdom has always claimed that S ry and Kaga sank shortly
thereafter of their own accord. However, a careful reading of the evidence
reveals that Nagumo had both carriers deliberately scuttled.
The reasons for this are manifold. However, at the core lay Nagumo’s
desperate desire to try and find a way to move actively against the Americans,
which by late afternoon meant precipitating a nighttime engagement. Kond was
clearly of like mind as he continued charging eastward to Nagumo’s aid. At
1750, doubtless thinking that his ships would be called on to join with Nagumo’s
in their sweep eastward, Kond radioed the units of his subordinate commands,
detailing the manner in which they would engage the enemy. As was to be
expected, they would rely mainly on torpedoes.6 Kond ordered the torpedoes in
his force set to a relatively shallow running depth of four meters–an implicit
indication that Kond expected to be fighting cruisers and destroyers this
evening, and not heavier carriers and battleships.7 The problem was that at that
very moment, when the Japanese forces needed to be most active, the majority
of Nagumo’s remaining destroyers were essentially immobile, tied to their
burning charges.
Near at hand, Kazagumo, Makigumo, Y gumo and one other unnamed
destroyer were actively assisting Yamaguchi’s burning flagship.8 Some sixty
miles to the south, Isokaze and Hamakaze bore witness to S ry ’s agony, while
not far to the southeast from them, Nowaki and Arashi were keeping watch over
Nagumo’s former flagship. Still further west and south, Hagikaze and Maikaze
attended to Kaga. Thus, ten of Nagumo’s tin cans were currently unavailable for
night operations, and some were quite far away. Kaga’s two consorts were
nearly eighty nautical miles from Nagumo’s flag–a good three hours’ steaming,
and the guards around Akagi and S ry weren’t much closer. Clearly, if the
force was to mass in time to fight a surface battle to the east, it was essential to
deal intelligently and expeditiously with the stricken carriers. Therefore, despite
Nagumo’s obvious desire to continue trying to save them for as long as possible,
as dusk came on other factors began taking precedence.
 Nagumo needed destroyers for two reasons. First was their firepower.
Unlike the Americans, who believed in the primacy of gunfire during night
combat, the cornerstone of Japanese night tactics was the devastating Type 93
torpedo (more popularly known in postwar American parlance as the “Long
Lance’).9 Between Nagumo’s eleven destroyers and three cruisers, his
diminished fleet mounted 120 torpedo tubes. Eighty-eight of them were carried
by the destroyers, making their participation indispensable.
The second reason was that of scouting. Before the advent of radar, the only
way to locate an enemy at night was to find him either with spotting aircraft or
with one’s own warships. Nagara had the only night-capable recon plane in the
force, and it was unlikely that her E11A1 would be able to sniff out the
Americans by itself, although the moonlight might be a factor in its favor.10
Realistically, though, Nagumo’s only hope was to spread his vessels out and
search optically. Standard night-search doctrine prescribed a number of linear
formations that were all designed to cover as much territory as possible while
still maintaining central control over the formation. Once the enemy was found,
the detecting ship would maintain contact, while the rest of the formation was
pulled together preparatory to initiating a concentrated attack. The relationship
between numbers of ships and searching was straightforward–the more ships
available, the more area that could be searched. The converse was also true–
every destroyer absent this night would cost Nagumo as much as fifteen
kilometers of search frontage and a commensurately lessened chance of
detecting the enemy. Consequently, the destroyers had to be freed up somehow.
Simply rescuing the crews of the stricken carriers and leaving their hulks to
founder was not an option. Nagumo and his staff knew that fire in and of itself
does not normally cause ships to sink. While a fire may gut a vessel and utterly
ruin it, without a mechanism for admitting water into the hull, a ship may float
almost indefinitely even after the blaze is out. Such indeed was the case for all
the Japanese carriers at Midway. None of them–with the possible exception of
Akagi, as the result of her near miss astern–had received any underwater
damage. And despite what Lieutenant Naganuma may have been witnessing in S
ry ’s engine rooms, none of the carriers seems to have suffered much damage
to their watertight integrity. Therefore, none of them was likely to go down by
herself any time soon.
The destroyers themselves were also in danger. At 1830, having received a
sighting report indicating (erroneously, as it turned out) that significant enemy
forces were approaching, the commander of DesDiv 4, Captain Ariga Kosaku,
issued a startling order to Nowaki, Hagikaze, Hamakaze, and Isokaze. “Each ship
will stand by the carrier assigned to her and screen her from enemy submarines
and task forces. Should the enemy task force approach, engage him in hit-and-
run tactics and destroy him.”11 Not only that, but American submarines were
apparently still skulking about–at 1800 Akagi was advised to be on the lookout
for one in her vicinity.12 The ongoing risk to the escorts–loitering almost
stationary around their charges, whose giant pillars of smoke could not help but
attract unwanted attention–was increasingly difficult to justify. The only
intelligent thing to do was to scuttle any carrier that couldn’t make it back home
under her own power.
Of the four flattops, Hiry ’s condition was the most obvious to Nagumo.
She was still capable of making twenty-eight knots and appeared as if she might
be salvageable. Akagi’s situation was less clear. Indeed, her own crew was still
trying to determine what the final outcome of their nine-hour ordeal was going
to be. By now, they knew that their firefighting efforts had availed them nothing;
the flagship was largely burned out and wrecked. But there remained the
possibility that her engines might yet be made operational. At 1820 an
engineering party again attempted to descend into her machinery spaces to
assess their state but was turned back by conditions below. Finally, at 1915 her
chief engineer announced to Captain Aoki that there was no longer any
possibility of her operating under her own power.13 Aoki knew that the jig was
up and wasted no more time giving the order at 1920 that all hands should
prepare to abandon ship. He signaled Nowaki and Arashi that they should come
alongside to begin transferring her personnel.
Kaga and S ry ’s status, though, was ascertained–and acted upon–rather
more quickly. Starting at 1732, Captain Ariga began sending out feelers to the
other escorts to assess their status. He radioed Isokaze, ordering her to continue
standing by her charge, but also inquiring whether S ry might be “operational
if her fires were brought under control?”14 The reaction of Isokaze’s skipper,
Cdr. Toyoshima Shunichi, to the question of whether S ry ’s smoldering,
motionless hulk could be made operational is unrecorded. In the event, Isokaze
took her time in answering, finally responding at 1802 that S ry had no chance
of navigating under her own power and that her survivors had already been taken
on board.
At 1800, just before Isokaze replied, Ariga sent another message to both S
ry and Kaga’s escorts, asking whether either carrier was in danger of sinking.
Kaga’s escorts had previously signaled at 1700 and 1715 that she was
inoperational, that the emperor’s portrait had been taken on board Hagikaze, and
that Kaga’s crew had been recovered. Maikaze reiterated this same message
again at 1750. Consequently, neither Maikaze nor Hagikaze bothered to reply to
Captain Ariga’s 1800 query–the implication of their silence was clear enough.15
By around 1805, then, Ariga knew that Kaga and S ry were clearly
beyond hope. As a result, the only possible course of action open to the Japanese
was to call a halt to the desultory firefighting efforts. Any parties still on board
the two vessels needed to be recovered, any men left in the water picked up, and
the carriers disposed of so that their destroyers could go about their business.
This is exactly what transpired.
It must be noted that no explicit order to scuttle S ry or Kaga is preserved
in the primary signal record of the day–the Nagumo Report. Instead, the
previous accounts of the battle would have us believe that S ry and Kaga sank
strictly of their own accord.16 Senshi Sosho also supports this notion, at least
with regards to Kaga.17 Yet, it is fascinating to note that in Kaga’s case Senshi
Sosho admits that it draws primarily from the remembrances of Commander
Amagai for its account of her sinking, and Amagai maintained that Kaga had not
been scuttled.18 Yet, it has already been established that Amagai was not always
the most reliable witness to the day’s events.19 Furthermore, there is no question
that he, as senior surviving officer, had more personal embarrassment to suffer
from her scuttling than any of her other survivors. Taken together, his rather
strange, unsolicited denial of Kaga’s scuttling to his American interrogators
shortly after the war begins to take on the character of a man who “doth protest
too much.” And there are numerous pieces of evidence that suggest a rather
different picture.
At the top of the list are the particulars surrounding the demise of the two
carriers. Both sank within twelve minutes of each other at around 1915,
ostensibly as the result of large explosions on each. But both carriers had now
been burning for nearly nine hours, with no indication that they were prepared to
sink any time soon. Indeed, the fires on both were apparently subsiding to some
degree. For that reason, S ry ’s hik ch , Commander Kusamoto, was
assembling a firefighting party to return to the ship at around 1900. However, as
he was about to do so, he was obliged to refrain from his actions because S ry ,
in the words of Senshi S sho, “began to sink.”20 This is an interesting turn of
phrase to use in conjunction with what was supposed to have been a sudden,
cataclysmic explosion.
Likewise, there was apparently a small firefighting party still on board
Kaga at this time as well.21 A cutter had been sent over from the Hagikaze to
bring them off, but the men had merely asked that a hand pump be sent over
instead. Shortly thereafter, the cutter returned, this time with a written order that
the men abandon the ship. The presence of a written order suggests a rather
premeditative quality to her forthcoming demise. Finally, it is interesting to note
that at almost this same time, 1920, Captain Aoki finally ordered Akagi
abandoned. As he did so, he specifically requested that she be scuttled by
torpedo–though that order was subsequently countermanded.22 In sum, the
spontaneous presence of large explosions on both Kaga and S ry within twelve
minutes of each other at about this time is clearly a little too convenient to be
believable.
Another interesting piece of circumstantial evidence is a gap in the recorded
communications of DesDiv 4. Captain Ariga’s orders to his units were all
dutifully recorded in the Nagumo Report. But there is a gap of three numbered
messages from Ariga between 1830 and 2100. This omission in his recorded
conversations, coming just after his earlier pointed inquiries as to the status of
the carriers, is intriguing to say the least, especially since any messages ordering
the disposal of the carriers would logically have been issued during this time
period. Although it is impossible to say for certain that such messages were
transmitted by Ariga, it must also be noted that the Japanese were not shy about
destroying the operational records associated with this particular battle,
particularly those that contained unpleasant facts. This is apparently what
happened for the logs of Tone and Chikuma after the battle, logs that might have
helped explain the failure of Tone’s No. 4 aircraft to launch on time during the
morning. It is perhaps not surprising that the recorded messages for DesDiv 4
met the same fate.
Taken together, it is clear that the reason that S ry ’s hik ch was not
allowed to reboard S ry at about 1900 was that her fate had been determined
even as Kusamoto was assembling his damage-control party. One can well
imagine his shock at being informed that his ship was about to be scuttled. While
we can only speculate on Kusamoto’s reaction, we know how at least one of S
ry ’s senior officers felt about the matter. On board Isokaze, S ry ’s gunnery
officer, Commander Kanao, greeted the news that she was shortly to be scuttled
with rank incredulity. He argued bitterly with Isokaze’s Commander Toyoshima,
saying that the order should not be carried out. Japan, Kanao asserted, had
already won the war, and that instead of sinking S ry , the destroyer ought to be
towing her home instead! Toyoshima, apparently divining that Kanao was
unwilling or unable to drop the matter, finally instructed a nearby sailor to
accompany the overwrought officer to Toyoshima’s own cabin, so that he might
get some much-needed rest. Grudgingly, Kanao left the destroyer’s bridge and
went below. Once in Toyoshima’s cabin, his exhaustion finally overcame him,
and he passed out.23 With Kanao out of the way, Toyoshima was able to begin
preparations for the grim business at hand.

S ry , however, was not yet completely abandoned. Lieutenant Naganuma and

his small party of men had finally made their way out of the engine spaces. The
vessel was empty of life and burning all around them, and they were not yet
outside the ship’s structure.24 To Naganuma, it appeared that she had also taken
on something of a list. From where they stood, it looked like the only way out
was up another companionway and through a hole made by a bomb hit. Yet all
around them were flames and hot metal; the railing on the stairway was a light
peach color from the heat. Looking around, Naganuma and a few of the men
found some water in buckets. Pouring it on themselves, they charged up the
stairway, only to be driven back by the intense heat. Naganuma determined to
try again. Pouring another bucketful over himself, he clenched his eyes shut and
ran for it. Somehow he managed to make it up to the deck. Another engineer,
Horita Kazuaki, was right behind him, but that was it. The others were either
unable or unwilling to try their chances. From below, Naganuma heard them
singing a military song. The sound was enough to make Naganuma weep.
Now on deck, Naganuma and Horita debated what to do. The ship was
noticeably deeper in the water, but they did not know whether or not it was safe
to start swimming. Suddenly, there was a large jolt, which (as we shall see) was
likely one of Isokaze’s torpedoes striking the ship, probably at around 1912.
Naganuma’s decision was made for him as he and his companion were thrown
into the ocean. Naganuma suddenly was concerned lest the ship sink too close to
them and they be dragged under by the suction. They simply swam for it. After
about 200 meters, he looked back over his shoulder.
S ry ’s bow hung above them almost vertically. To the two men in the
water, their eyes stinging from fuel oil, the hull of the carrier seemed enormous.
As they watched, fascinated, S ry plunged rapidly backward into the sea. The
water, which had been calm up to this point, was suddenly choppy. Enormous
bubbles and spouts of water were still leaping up from the ship’s grave. The two
survivors realized with horror that they were being dragged back in toward the
ship. Naganuma and Horita struck out again with a will, trying desperately to
escape the vortex. Soon, though, the terrifying moment was passed, and they
were left to make their way unmolested. They also found that they were not
alone–other small clumps of men still remained in the water.
Naganuma wondered what was to become of him. At a conscious level, he
felt ashamed that he had survived and remorseful for his lost companions. He
heard their doomed singing in his head yet again. He was not a strong swimmer
and could only manage to keep himself afloat with the breaststroke. No floating
wreckage presented itself, so he had no choice but to make do the best he could.
He realized that he was very hungry, and wondered if he was going to live. He
found, though, that he no longer feared death. Living or dying–either seemed
acceptable. His body, though, ignored his internal musings and simply kept
swimming.
Finally, a destroyer hove into view. Naganuma recognized it for a tokugata
(“special type”–the Japanese name given to the world’s first modern destroyer,
the Fubuki, and all her numerous descendants). The ship was closing to within a
few hundred meters in the rapidly gathering darkness, and Naganuma realized
that it was now or never. His ambivalence to the prospect of death suddenly
vanished–he waved his arms and shouted himself hoarse. Gratifyingly, a sailor
on board the destroyer waved back. Not knowing what else to do, Naganuma
simply floated, waiting. Finally, a canvas bucket was cast down to him, and he
grabbed hold. Strong hands pulled him upward effortlessly, along with Horita.
Naganuma fainted as soon as he hit the deck.
Down in the captain’s cabin on board Isokaze, Kanao had heard and felt
two large explosions. Lurching back to consciousness, he was at first sure that
Isokaze had been hit. But the ship was moving, and nothing seemed amiss. Still
too exhausted to move, he had not been able to determine the nature of the
explosions and soon passed out again. It was not until the next morning that his
shipmates told him Isokaze had scuttled S ry with three torpedoes. She had
begun listing soon after the hits and had then upended and sank stern first with
an eerie gurgling at 1913.25 Five minutes later, a large underwater explosion
occurred in her grave. Out of her nominal complement of 1,103 officers and
men, 711 had perished–the highest mortality percentage of any of the Midway
carriers.26
At 1915 Hamakaze radioed a single terse message to Nagumo: “S ry has
sunk.” Somewhere to the west, a similar scene was playing out around Kaga.
Belowdecks on Hagikaze, Yoshino Haruo heard the intercom hiss and then
announce, “Regrettably, since we cannot tow Kaga back home, with remorse we
will now sink her. All those who are able … should go topside immediately to
… say farewell.”27 Yoshino made his way topside, already teeming with Kaga’s
men. Akamatsu Y ji was there as well.28 Over 700 of the carrier’s survivors now
crammed the two diminutive tin cans, and it was literally standing room only for
the unwounded. The casualties littered the deckplates everywhere. Hagikaze was
lying off Kaga’s starboard side, with both ships’ bows pointing generally
northward.29 The sun had gone down some twenty minutes before, at 1856,
leaving Kaga lit by the sunset. To Yoshino, the scene had the appearance of a
shadow painting. The aviator could detect no signs of Akagi anywhere–she must
have been out of sight over the horizon. Then he took a last long look at his ship.
It was clear that even if she could have been towed all the way back to
Japan, Kaga would never sail again. Here, at the end of her terrible trial,
everyone could see that she was fit for nothing more than the scrapyard. Her
lower hull appeared to still be in good shape. But everything above was
wrecked. Her midsection, from the bridge all the way aft to the rear elevator, had
been utterly destroyed. Induced explosions had remorselessly demolished the
hangars, chewing their way down all the way to the level of the lower main deck
and the eight-inch casemate mounts.30 Where the hangars used to be, only a
hellish pit of smoking, blackened metal remained. It was filled with charred
structural members, melted and deformed aircraft pieces, and sundry equipment
from the decks above–a hideous, tumbled graveyard lying over the hundreds of
men who lay entombed in the engine rooms. The pit still smoked and spat.
Yoshino could see all the way through the abyss to the sea beyond. It was as if
the heart had been ripped out of the vessel. Only at the extreme rear, where the
flight deck was supported by four massive pillars (and there had been nothing to
burn) did a stump of intact decking remain. It stood there, suspended fifty feet
above the ghastly charnel house of the hangars, almost in mockery of the
countless sorties that had emanated from what had once been one of the largest
flight decks in the Japanese Navy.
The damage to the forward hangars was similar, although somewhat less
severe. However, the port side of the forward hangars was blown asunder,
doubtless because the ordnance lift had been located here. Flames, though much
diminished now, still greedily licked at the openings. Kaga’s island was
smashed, almost as if a giant’s hand had slapped the bridge, crushing it forward
and down.31 The whole of it was charred and black, the paint having been
consumed in the blaze, leaving only the scorched metal. Inside, the bodies of
Captain Okada and his senior officers still lay where they had fallen. In all, 811
of her crew now lay dead within the shattered wreck.32 To Yoshino and the other
men who had served on board her, Kaga’s current state was cause for the
bitterest sorrow. He now tasted the full dregs of defeat for the first time.33
Hagikaze’s skipper, Commander Iwagami Juichi, could waste no more time
observing nautical niceties. He had already brought his destroyer into an optimal
firing position, a couple thousand meters off Kaga’s starboard side. He could
hardly have missed so massive a target. The survivors heard the hiss of
compressed air as both of the destroyer’s quadruple torpedo tubes were slewed
around to port.35 On command from the captain, a single fish was fired from
each and slapped into the water. Japanese torpedoes were wakeless, and there
was no telltale trail of bubbles to mark their progress. The refugees simply
waited–Japanese destroyer men knew their business, and no one doubted the
outcome. Just over a minute later, two enormous waterspouts announced the
hammering arrival of the torpedoes’ 1,000-pound warheads, striking Kaga
slightly aft of midships. The power of the hits heaved seawater several hundred
feet into the air, whereupon it cascaded back down in white clouds to smother
the smoking wreck beneath. There were no other explosions.36 Kunisada arrived
on deck only just in time. He had been sleeping in a corner below but had been
roused by communications man, Oda, his companion of many hours together in
the water, who informed him that Kaga was soon to be sunk.37 Painfully, he had
made his way topside to the foredeck, where he found hik ch Amagai standing
beside the forward five-inch gun mount, staring off at the hulk. Maeda Takeshi
stood watching as well, tears streaming freely down his face, like many of his
shipmates around him.38

18-1: Artist’s rendition of Kaga’s condition immediately before being scuttled.34

Slowly, and still on an even keel, Kaga began swooning stern first into the
waiting arms of the sea. On Maikaze, one of the carrier’s aviators, Lt. (jg.)
Morinaga Takayoshi watched in silence.39 Maikaze’s skipper, Cdr. Nakasugi
Seiji, remembered later that “it was a horrendous sight to see a huge warship like
this vanish. But she went nobly.”40 It took several minutes, so dignified was her
sinking. Finally, at 1925 the water closed over the forward flight deck, and she
was gone. Only massive bubbles and some floating debris remained. The men
simply stared. The sun, too, had now fully departed, and darkness descended.
Next to Kunisada, Amagai mumbled to himself “I should have died with
her,” and his head fell. The hik ch was dejected in the extreme, and regretted
leaving the ship. Amagai blurted out to the damage-control officer that of the
fourteen senior officers on board, only he and the chief surgeon had survived the
ship’s ordeal. Many of them had been lost in the initial moments of the attack.
One of the few to survive the blaze, the ship’s chief paymaster, Lt. Cdr.
Matsukawa Takeshi, had at least made it into the water with a group of other
survivors, but Amagai had seen his strength finally give out. Matsukawa had
simply said to the men bobbing around him, “I’m dying now,” and had sunk out
of sight. Amagai particularly lamented the losses among the engineering staff.
Scarcely a stoker or engineer was to be seen among the survivors.41 Kunisada
consoled Amagai as best he could. The lieutenant, too, felt that he should have
shared the carrier’s fate, but there was no helping it now. Wrapped in these
somber thoughts, both men felt Hagikaze’s deck plates begin vibrating as the
destroyer worked up speed. She and Maikaze were clearing the area, heading
toward Akagi. Kaga was left alone to drift down into her watery grave, some
17,000 feet below

Meanwhile, to the north around Hiry , the last of the Zeros was finally down by
about 1910.42 Nine aircraft in all ditched, and ironically not a single pilot from
Hiry was among them–they had all been refugees from either S ry or Kaga.
One by one, they plopped into the water close aboard the Japanese escorts.
Nagara and the destroyers swung into action picking up the pilots. Kid Butai
was now completely devoid of air cover. This wouldn’t matter much in the
coming darkness, but all the men of the task force knew what it would mean
come the morrow. To one sailor on board Yugumo, the fleet’s fate now was “a
matter of time. We resolved to do our utmost and await the orders of God.”43
Hiry remained underway at twenty-eight knots. But despite her ability to
steam, she was in desperate peril. The fires were eating away at her
remorselessly, moving aft along the hangar decks. Down in the engine spaces,
Ensign Mandai and Chief Engineer Aimune were still stuck. Mandai began
noticing that the white overhead paint was blackening as the deck above heated.
Soon, burning flecks of paint were drifting down onto the grease-covered
engines, starting little fires wherever they touched.44 The air was stifling, and the
ventilators were beginning to admit smoke and fumes into the compartments.
Once the paint was off the overheads, the engineers could only watch in horror
as they slowly turned red and began to glow.

Nagumo, like Spruance, had no idea what this night would bring. Indeed, he still
had no very clear idea of what he was up against. Between 1320 and 1832, Tone
No. 4 and No. 3, and Chikuma No. 2 and No. 3 had all been on the air at one
point or another, having spotted portions of the American forces.45 But these
reports did little to enlighten Nagumo as to the true strength or intentions of the
enemy. It was apparent that the American carrier formations were operating
separately and that his aircraft were consequently catching only fragmented
glimpses of their total strength. However, as the day wore on, and the magnitude
of the defeat grew, so too did the scale of the enemy in the eyes of Nagumo. By
the time the last of his aircraft broke off contact, around 1830, Nagumo was
convinced that he was still up against a large number of American carriers,
despite his having (so far as he knew) already knocked out two flattops.
Furthermore, it appears that CruDiv 8 did Nagumo a disservice in terms of
accurately transmitting what its floatplanes were observing. Crucially, the matter
of the Americans’ course was bungled. At 1728 Chikuma’s No. 2 aircraft stated
that the Americans were retiring to the east on a course of 070 degrees,
modifying this at 1732 to a course of 110 degrees. Subsequently, at 1810
Chikuma No. 2 reported the Americans on a heading of 170 degrees, that is, due
south. Neither of these courses would bring the American carriers near Kid
Butai, which was then almost due west of TF 16. Yet at 1830, when CruDiv 8
offered up its own staff assessment, it reported the Americans were heading
westward. Worse, it overestimated the size of the American fleet, pegging them
at four carriers, six cruisers, and fifteen destroyers.46 CruDiv 8’s air staff was
apparently certain that Chikuma No. 2’s previous reconnaissance reports had
been of separate forces–indeed, that Chikuma had simultaneously sighted two
task forces containing two carriers apiece while flying near a cloud bank at low
altitude.47 However, the reasoning behind CruDiv 8’s staff reversing the
direction of the American advance remains largely unfathomable. At this point
in the battle, Nagumo was in no position to argue with what his remaining air
assets were allegedly telling him, nor to quibble over the size of the enemy force
that had smashed the four finest carriers in the Imperial Navy.
Though he had now disposed of two of his cripples, Nagumo found himself
in no better position to prosecute a night battle than he had been before. Not only
were the enemy forces arrayed against him apparently far more powerful than
originally thought, but he also still had very few destroyers close at hand. By
2100 the weary Mobile Fleet was in position 32°-10'N, 178°-50'E on course 320,
making twenty knots.48 Thus far, the burning Hiry was still managing to
maintain good speed. For the time being, therefore, Nagumo’s priority was
clearly to continue shepherding the stricken carrier, while waiting for his other
destroyers to rejoin him.
However, it does not appear that the destroyers were making good progress
in this regard. At 2100 Captain Ariga of DesDiv 4 signaled Sixth Fleet’s
submarines and Kond that six of his ships were still maintaining patrols quite
near Akagi.49 Not only that, but Isokaze, Hamakaze,, Hagikaze, and Maikaze
were all loaded to the gills with survivors. If and when Akagi was finally
scuttled, Nowaki and Arashi would be similarly burdened, because the flagship’s
refugees were even now being brought on board.
Nowaki duly reported completing her mission of mercy at 2200. Only one
man remained on board Akagi now–Captain Aoki. He had informed his staff that
such was his attachment to the carrier that her fate would be his own as well.50
They were disinclined to allow him to stay, but the captain furiously insisted on
it. He ordered them to tie him to the anchor capstan, and there they left him.
However, Akagi’s final fate was to be long in coming, as Yamamoto personally
ordered at 2225 that the scuttling be delayed.51
As events would prove, though, no orders would be forthcoming from
Yamamoto regarding her final disposition for seven more hours. By 0030,
having left Aoki aboard Akagi more than two hours earlier, her hik ch , Masuda
Shogo, apparently decided that enough was enough.52 Organizing a party, he
piled into one of Arashi’s cutters, taking Commander Miura, Akagi’s navigator,
and Captain Ariga with him. Rowing back over to Akagi, they found Captain
Aoki still lashed to the ship. Over his protests, Commander Miura pointed out
that since Akagi would (eventually) be scuttled by their own torpedoes, he didn’t
have to sacrifice himself in this way. Aoki was still unwilling to depart. Finally,
Captain Ariga, who was senior to Aoki, gave him a direct order.53 Aoki had no
choice now but to follow his staff back to Arashi. In retrospect, it might have
been kinder for Aoki had his men left him be. Destined to be the only Japanese
carrier commander to survive Midway, he would be haunted by Akagi’s loss the
rest of his life.54

Meanwhile, Hiry had finally ground to a halt at 2123.55 Up until this point,
Hiry still had both a working fire system and engine power. Her crew had been
fighting the fires with every hose at their disposal. But with power gone, their
efforts were flagging. Now, the flagship of DesDiv 10, destroyer Kazagumo
undertook the dangerous task of moving close alongside the carrier. Her sisters,
Makigumo and Tanikaze, also played hoses across Hiry ’s wounds, pouring
water into her. Even these efforts were not enough, though, and at 2130 Y gumo
headed over toward cruiser Chikuma, so that the latter could pass across more
lengths of hose to her.56 The result of all these efforts was that Hiry had now
taken a 15-degree list to port as her hangar decks filled with firefighting water.57
This list made things very difficult for Kazagumo as she worked alongside
the convulsing carrier. Commander Yoshida Masayoshi brought her as near as
he could; too near, in fact, for the galleries of Hiry broke the destroyer’s mast.
The other destroyers played continuous streams of water onto the fires as best
they could, while the heavier units continued circling the wounded ship at a
respectful distance.
At this point, Kid Butai was no longer really capable of bringing the fight
to an outsized enemy, and as the evening wore on, Nagumo had begun to realize
it. Accordingly, at 2130 he transmitted a fateful status report to Yamamoto,
basically repeating CruDiv 8’s earlier erroneous assessment of five enemy
carriers (later revised downward to four), six cruisers, and fifteen destroyers, all
heading westward.58 He also informed Yamamoto that his own forces were
protecting Hiry and were retiring to the northwest at eighteen knots.
For Yamamoto, the last hour had been stressful in the extreme. At 1800 he
had received a report from Nagumo confirming that Kaga was done for,59
followed shortly by news of Hiry ’s bombing.60 By now, Yamamoto and Ugaki
were both becoming increasingly concerned about Nagumo’s handling of the
battle. Subsequently, the Yamato had transmitted orders to all units of Combined
Fleet at 1915 that were intended to set the night’s priorities. Yamamoto signaled:

1. The enemy fleet, which has practically been destroyed, is retiring to

the east.

2. Combined Fleet units in the vicinity are preparing to pursue the

remnants and at the same time, to occupy AF (Midway).

3. The Main Unit [i.e., Yamamoto’s Main Body] is scheduled to

reached position (grid) FU ME RI 32 on course 90 degrees, speed 20 knots,
by 0000, 6th [i.e., June 5th, local time].

4. The Mobile Force, Occupation Force (less CruDiv 7), and Advance
Force will immediately contact and attack the enemy.61

Five minutes later, Yamamoto sent additional amplifying instructions.

Submarine 1-168, which had been loitering off of Midway, was to shell the
enemy airfield. Meanwhile, Kurita’s CruDiv 7 was to approach Midway and
deliver another shellacking as soon as was practicable.62 In layman’s terms, the
effects of these two sets of orders was to goad both Kond and Nagumo into
initiating a surface action ASAP, while the Main Body continued coming up in
support. The invasion of Midway was still officially on, and in preparation for
that, the airfield conclusively had to be put out of commission.
To say that these transmissions were somewhat divorced from reality is a
gross understatement. Yamamoto was trying to run his ruined battle by remote
control, while completely unaware of the tactical conditions pertaining. In the
words of Ugaki, though, Combined Fleet’s staff believed that “The fate of this
operation entirely depended upon the night engagement.” Yet, at this critical
juncture, it was Ugaki’s opinion that Nagumo’s command had become “entirely
passive.”63 This was an ironic statement, in that it was partly the aggressiveness
of Ugaki’s favorite, Admiral Yamaguchi, that had led Kid Butai to the point
where it could no longer realistically take the offensive.
However, it is important to note that at this point in time Yamamoto and
Ugaki had different information in hand than Nagumo. The only report the
commander in chief had received from CruDiv 8 was Chikuma No. 2’s 1733
transmission indicating the enemy carriers were retiring to the east. This had
arrived on the bridge of Yamato at 1836.64 Combined Fleet’s staff had
apparently not received any of CruDiv 8’s subsequent flawed analyses regarding
the likely strength of the enemy, or his latest movements. Thus, Nagumo’s 2130
transmission opining that the enemy consisted of five carriers heading west
appeared to Ugaki and Yamamoto to be totally without basis. Nagumo’s
corollary decision to withdraw to the northwest was the final straw. In Ugaki’s
opinion, “a strong lashing order by the supreme command” was the only way to
remedy the prevailing situation.65
Ugaki, as we know, had never been shy of applying the lash when it came
to the commander of Kid Butai. It came, at 2255, in the form of an order
relieving Nagumo of command and ordering Kond to take control of the
Mobile Force, except for Hiry , Akagi, and their respective escorts. Nagumo Ch
ichi was stripped of command and left to preside over the fates of two burning
derelicts, while the aggressive Kond was put in charge of the coming night
battle. Twenty-five minutes later, Yamamoto radioed Kond , asking him to
elaborate on the movements of CruDiv 8 and the second section of BatDiv 3. In
other words, he no longer trusted Nagumo to give him credible information
regarding the movements of Kid Butai’s heavy forces.
 Nagumo’s reaction to his relief is not recorded, but it cannot have been a
happy one. Stuck as he still was on the cramped bridge of Nagara, he had
watched as his command over the day’s events had constricted into a smaller and
smaller sphere. Now, he was completely out of the loop. Ironically, just five
minutes before Yamamoto relieved him, he had transmitted a message to the
commander in chief amplifying his earlier assessment and repeating that the
Americans were heading west with four carriers. He also clarified that none of
his own carriers was operational.66 At 2330, half an hour after being relieved of
command, and probably imagining that Yamamoto simply didn’t have adequate
information in hand when he made his decision, he rebroadcast to Yamamoto
that two Hornet-class carriers, and two others of unidentified class, were in the
enemy fleet. It was as much as if to say, “Perhaps you didn’t comprehend what
was communicated earlier.” Yamamoto and Ugaki, though, weren’t in a mood to
quibble over the facts.
For his part, Kond was quick to implement his superior’s bidding. At
midnight, he sent out orders to his subordinate commands–DesRon 2, CruDiv 5,
CruDiv 4, and DesRon 4–informing them that they should expect to encounter
the enemy some time after 0100. The cruiser squadrons were to be distributed in
line abreast, with the first section of BatDiv 3 (Hiei and Kongo) trailing them by
some ten kilometers. The destroyer squadrons would take up either flank of the
search line, with a six-kilometer separation between all ships.67 He instructed
Kid Butai to participate from the north. Nagumo, however, apparently did not
comply with either Yamamoto or Kond ’s orders. It is difficult to escape the
impression that “strong lashing orders” notwithstanding, Kid Butai was solely
focused on saving Hiry , if at all possible, and rescuing survivors.68
Nagumo’s noncompliance raised some eyebrows in his force. The skipper
of battleship Kirishima, Captain Iwabuchi Sanji, sent a message over to Admiral
Abe in CruDiv 8, politely opining that, as a supporting force, they perhaps ought
to be supporting the night action currently getting under way. Speaking up in
such a fashion was bold enough, but it was rather unprecedented that Iwabuchi
also bypassed his own divisional commander to send the message directly to the
screen commander. The implication was clear: Iwabuchi felt that the screen
should be pressing eastward without waiting for Kond . Abe declined to answer
his subordinate, and the screen stayed where it was. Nagumo would be fully
occupied with Hiry until 0112, when he finally came about and began moving
not east, but west toward the Main Body.69
The reason for Nagumo’s final retirement is clear–around midnight, it
became apparent that Hiry was done for. Although she had wallowed to a stop
some two and a half hours earlier, it seemed for a while as if her fires were being
tamed. However, two minutes before midnight, Hiry was hit by another
tremendous induced explosion, and the fires on the hangar deck once again
blazed up fiercely.70 Although Captain Kaku would hang on for another few
hours, Nagumo apparently felt that the ship’s doom was sealed.
At about the same time, judging that he had moved eastward long enough to
forestall any Japanese attempt to engage him, Admiral Spruance was considering
his next course of action. Heading directly up the enemy’s line of retreat to the
northwest would place his own forces in potential jeopardy, he concluded.
Therefore, he came about to shape a course due west, at a leisurely fifteen knots.
Thereafter, Spruance decided to get some rest. If ever the phrase “ice water in
the veins” applied to a man, it was to Raymond Spruance. But as he explained to
an interviewer years later, “I had good officers with me; they knew their jobs;
they would carry on. Why should I not sleep soundly?” Furthermore, he knew
that tomorrow’s actions would be potentially just as dangerous, and he needed to
be fresh to face them.71

Back on board Yamato, Spruance’s opposite numbers were suffering from the
same stress-induced fatigue and poor judgment that the American admiral sought
so assiduously to avoid. As Spruance was turning in, Yamamoto and Ugaki were
beginning to have doubts about the wisdom of their earlier orders. It was now
2330, and the enemy had yet to be encountered. Ugaki concluded that there was
“little prospect of challenging the enemy with a night engagement before dawn”
and warned the operations room not to let the night engagement force go too far,
“thus bringing the situation after dawn beyond control.”72 Some quick usage of
the calipers on the map also revealed another fact–Kurita’s CruDiv 7 would
never reach Midway before they were hopelessly exposed to American airpower.
Accordingly, at 0015, Yamamoto issued orders ordering Kond and Nagumo
(less Akagi, Hiry , and their escorts) to all fall back on Yamamoto’s Main
Body.73 Five minutes later, he signaled Kurita’s CruDiv 7 to abort its
bombardment.
These orders were clearly precursors to the inevitable. Still, there were men
in Combined Fleet’s staff who could not, or would not, let go of the notion that
victory could somehow still be wrested from the enemy. Kuroshima and
Watanabe, the two staff officers with perhaps the greatest emotional investment
in its planning, came up with the idea that the Main Body’s battleships should
continue advancing on Midway the following morning and pulverize it with their
heavy guns. Carrying what he later termed his “crazy explanation” up to the
bridge in a frenzy of excitement, Watanabe laid out his plan. Yamamoto listened
to his staff officers politely, then said, “I am sure you have studied in the Naval
Staff College that Navy history teaches us not to fight against land forces with
naval vessels.”74
A suddenly chastened Watanabe responded that he had.
“Your proposal is against fundamental naval doctrine,” Yamamoto ground
on, “And it is too late now for such an operation. This battle is almost coming to
an end.”75 He ended by criticizing his staff’s willingness to take unfounded
risks. “You’ve been playing too much shogi!”76 Ugaki lost no time in piling on
his own disapproval. “You ought to know very well the absurdity of attacking a
fortress with a fleet!” he said, continuing, “It is the plan of a fool without a brain
to challenge a hopeless game of go again and again out of desperation!”77
Watanabe and Kuroshima retreated back to Yamato’s operation room. To
Watanabe, it was clear that Yamamoto had already given up on the operation,
and now he had little choice but to cut new orders of the most dreadful kind.
When next he returned to Yamato’s bridge, he was carrying a draft order to
reassemble the fleet and fall back toward Japan. Yamamoto dutifully approved
them, and at 0255, Yamato began transmitting:78
Combined Fleet DesOpOrd #161:

1. Occupation of AF (Midway) is canceled.

2. The Main Unit will assemble the Occupation Force and the First
Mobile Force (less the Hiry and her escorts), and will carry out refueling
operations during the morning of 7 June.

3. The Screening Force, Hiry , and her escorts, and the Nisshin will
proceed to the same position.

4. The Landing Force will proceed westward, out of Midway’s air

range.79

The Japanese had been defeated, and it was time to cut their losses.
Yamamoto continued hurrying east with the Main Body to meet up with the
shattered remnants of Nagumo’s force.

Of all the Japanese formations now in the vicinity of Midway, Admiral Kurita’s
four cruisers were by far the most exposed. They had been racing east, led by
Kumano, with her sisters Suzuya, Mikuma, and Mogami in train. Destroyers
Asashio and Arashio, as well as the oiler that had been accompanying them, had
long since been left behind.80 CruDiv 7 contained four of the swiftest ships in
the Japanese inventory, capable of knocking down thirty-five knots. They were
using a healthy dose of that speed now. Each was heavily armed as well,
sporting ten eight-inch guns and a lethal battery of twelve twenty-four-inch
torpedo tubes. They could inflict enormous harm on Midway’s airfield, if they
could get within range.
By 2245 Midway was tantalizingly close. Unfortunately for Kurita,
Yamamoto’s orders canceling the bombardment mission, had mistakenly been
first sent to CruDiv 8, not CruDiv 7, resulting in a delay of more than two hours
before he finally received them about 0230.81 By this time, Midway was less
than fifty nautical miles away.82 To the men on Kumano’s bridge, the order was
a bitter disappointment. They had come so far, only to have to turn about at the
last moment. Having no choice, however, Kurita ordered his force to a new
course to the northwest, to close on the Main Body.
At 0215 Kurita’s force was sighted by the American submarine Tambor,
which was surfaced in her patrol area. Tambor noted an unidentified force to the
south of its position, composed of “four large ships” bearing 279 True from
Midway, course about 50 degrees. Having been warned that U.S. ships might be
in the area, Lt. Cdr. John W. Murphy came south, paralleling and shadowing
them, but hesitating to radio a notice while still trying to identify the ships.
Shortly after, Tambor temporarily lost contact in the gloom. At 0238, though, the
submarine found her quarry again, noting with surprise that the ships now
appeared headed north toward her.
It was true. Just before this Kurita had finally received the mistransmitted
recall order, and at 0230 commenced to change course to break off to the north.
This sent his four swift cruisers heading directly toward the skulking Tambor.
However, almost immediately a sharp-eyed lookout on board Kumano sighted
the American submarine ahead and to port of the Japanese column. The flagship
immediately flashed the warning “Aka! Aka! (Red! Red!)” down the line,
ordering an evasive turn in echelon to port. Moving at high speed, Kurita’s
squadron was thrown into confusion. Kumano cut very sharply to port, heading
almost due west before rounding back to a northwest course. Behind her, Suzuya
only turned about 45 degrees and quickly found herself closing on the flagship.
She swerved to starboard, cutting across Kumano’s wake, and barely missing her
astern.83
Next in line astern, Mikuma conformed to Suzuya’s movements, finding
herself off Suzuya’s port beam. Seeing Suzuya veering away to starboard to
avoid ramming Kumano, Mikuma likewise adjusted her own course more to the
west to avoid becoming entangled with the flagship. In doing so, though, she
brought herself directly into the path of the southernmost cruiser, Mogami.
Mogami had sheered out of line very sharply to port, then watched as the rest of
the formation appeared to be making off to the northwest, leaving her behind.
Her skipper, Captain Soji Akira, thereupon corrected her course yet again,
turning back to starboard to head more to the northwest in pursuit of the
flagship.
It was at this moment that Mikuma suddenly hove into sight, crossing
Mogami’s bow right to left. At the last second, Soji attempted to turn back to
port, but it was too late. Mikuma’s captain, Sakiyama Shakao, did not see his
sister ship coming up from the south and held course due west until almost the
last second. So it was that Mogami, still desperately turning to port to avoid the
unavoidable, rammed Mikuma almost directly under her bridge.84
The blow was glancing, as such things go. Captain Soji’s last second
maneuvering at least resulted in Mogami’s hitting her sister fairly obliquely.
Nevertheless, the impact of a 13,000-ton cruiser traveling at twenty-eight knots
could not help but be calamitous. Amid the cacophonous shrieking of tearing
steel, Mogami’s thin, graceful bow ground itself to destruction on Mikuma’s
heavy armor belt. By the time her forward momentum was fully checked,
Mogami’s prow had been spectacularly crumpled all the way back to the No. 1
main turret. What remained was forty feet shorter and wrenched almost
perpendicularly to port. Mogami lay dead in the water, drifting backward from
Mikuma. Mikuma’s damage was fairly minor. Her plating was stove in around
the wound, but the majority of the damage was above the waterline. However, a
fuel tank next to boiler room No. 4 was leaking oil from a gash twenty meters
long and six meters wide. Other smaller gashes could be seen below the No. 2
five-inch gun mount and the mainmast.
There was no other option except for both ships to get back up to speed as
best they could and make their way out of the area. Admiral Kurita reluctantly
ordered Kumano and Suzuuya ahead at high speed. Mikuma was detached to
escort Mogami out of the battlefield. Kurita radioed for DesDiv 8 to come east
and meet the lagging pair. The best speed Mogami could do was twelve knots,85
and even at this slow pace she handled like a barge. Limping away, less than a
hundred miles away from an enemy base, the odds were not good for her
survival.

18-2: Collision of Mogami and Mikuma. (Source: Senshi S sho, p. 476)

Japanese damage control, as we have seen, was often far from exemplary.
Yet on this occasion Mogami’s damage-control officer, Lt. Cdr. Saruwatari
Masayushi, displayed an acumen that would have made any navy proud. He
rallied the disoriented repair parties in the bow area and oversaw the shoring up
of the watertight compartments in the area. If his ship was going to be rammed
bent-prowed into a seaway, she would need all the stiffening she could get. Next,
he ordered the jettisoning of every piece of inflammable material that could be
found.86 Almost heretically, in a navy that exalted firepower above all other
things, this included the cruiser’s torpedoes.
 Mogami carried twenty-four Type 93s. Each of these thirty-foot monsters
was equipped with a 1080-pound explosive charge–the largest, most lethal
torpedo warhead in the world. Being powered by pure oxygen, every one was
filled with enough oxidant and kerosene fuel to escalate almost any fire into a
catastrophic inferno. If they were attacked by aircraft–and any fool could tell
that they were likely to be on the receiving end of such unwanted attentions once
the sun rose–a bomb hitting amidships would have the potential of igniting a
total of twelve tons of high explosives, twenty-four thousand liters of
compressed oxygen, and a couple tons of kerosene to boot. Accordingly,
Saruwatari summarily consigned the Type 93s to the deep. Mikuma’s damage-
control officer, however, judged that since her own damage was slight, she
would be best served by retaining her Type 93s. The comparative wisdom of
these two decisions would be graphically demonstrated over the following days.
Meanwhile, out in the gloom, Tambor remained blissfully ignorant of the
havoc she had caused, and even the identity of the prey she had stalked. At 0251
Tambor noted the strange ships had changed course even farther to the west
from their northerly heading, after which she lost contact. It was not until 0300
that Lt. Cdr. Murphy finally got off a contact report to Pearl Harbor and
Midway. Worse yet, his report was incredibly vague–since the unidentified
vessels had been moving at high speed and changing direction several times,
Murphy was reluctant to give a course for them, and reported only “many ships.”
Nor did he even suggest that they might have been enemy vessels. It was not
until 0437 that Murphy finally confirmed that the “many ships” in question
were, in fact, enemy cruisers.87 This tardiness was soon to cause great frustration
for Admiral Spruance.
In the meantime, another submarine, this one Japanese, was also at work off
Midway. Unlike CruDiv 7, no one had bothered getting word to I-168 that the
bombardment mission was now off.88 Lieutenant Commander Tanabe duly
surfaced his vessel off the east side of the lagoon at 0120 and let fly with a few
rounds. It wasn’t long, however, before the marine gunners made out the low
silhouette of the Japanese sub and began answering back.89 When the
searchlights flipped on, pinning Tanabe’s sub in their beams, he decided that that
was enough for one night and submerged again. His eight rounds landed mostly
in the lagoon and caused no damage to the American base.90 However, his
shelling certainly rattled the American defenders. They had no way of knowing
what the next day would bring and whether they might have Japanese
battlewagons parked on their doorstep in the morning.
Even before Tanabe’s visit, Midway had already been a hive of activity.
The island was in a shambles, with bombed installations and the destruction
from Tomonaga’s morning attack still in evidence everywhere. The fuel tanks on
Sand Island had continued to blaze well into the night, meaning that refueling
the base’s B-17s was proceeding laboriously by hand.91 Indeed, even as Tanabe
was shelling the island, Midway still had combat aircraft in the air. These were
not patrol aircraft, but rather a squadron of dive-bombers.
Some eight hours earlier, at 1700, a patrolling PBY had reported three
burning carriers to the northwest of the island. Though it had been drawing close
to sundown, Captain Cyril Simard ordered his base’s remaining attack aircraft
into action. He designated Major Benjamin Norris, who had taken command of
Lofton Henderson’s VMSB-241, to lead out his aircraft–six SBDs and six of the
older SB2Us.92 However, Norris, mindful of the toll Zeros had extracted
previously, opted for a night attack, with he and his men taking off at 1915. Two
hours later, Simard ordered Midway’s eight-strong PT boat squadron to proceed
to the same area.
Neither mission was successful. Norris and his squadron found the sea
empty, Kaga having sunk just ten minutes after they had taken off from Midway.
The weather had closed down in the interim, and the Marine aviators found
themselves battling squalls and a low overcast in pitch darkness on the way
home. Major Norris now paid the price for requesting a night mission, as he
apparently became disoriented in the gloom. His squadron members suddenly
noticed that their commander had banked into a sharp descent. His squadron
followed him from 10,000 feet down to a mere 500, then broke off when they
saw what was coming. Norris and his plane were never seen again.93 Some of
Norris’s men became lost on the way back to base, and the last of them didn’t
land until 0145. The PT boats, too, spent a long, fruitless evening chasing around
in search of Japanese vessels that had already sunk.

At 0230, even as he was wondering what to do about Hiry , Admiral Nagumo

sent out a comprehensive “battle summary” to Yamamoto.94 In it, he described
the day’s happenings in more detail, noted the damage to his ships, but still
opined that Hiry might yet be able to be saved. However, even as his superior
was informing Yamamoto of these matters, Yamaguchi was preparing to play
out his final act. In contrast to Nagumo, Yamaguchi had concluded the carrier
was beyond salvation. At 0230 he ordered the crew assembled in preparation of
abandoning ship.95 By 0250 the remaining crew–nearly 800 men–were gathered
on the flight deck near the bridge. The bridge was smoldering, and fires still
burned in the hangar deck forward, casting a weird light on the proceedings.
 As soon as all were assembled, Captain Kaku and the admiral addressed the
men.96 Kaku spoke first, exhorting them to carry on the fight. They would, he
was sure, become the core of an increasingly powerful Japanese Navy.97
Yamaguchi then went on to say that he was proud of Hiry ’s crew. He placed
the loss of Hiry and S ry solely on his own head, and as atonement for those
failings, he intended to stay on board to the end. The rest of the men, he
commanded, were to abandon ship and “carry on their loyal service to the
emperor.”98 Next, Yamaguchi ordered the men to face west toward Tokyo and
three banzais were issued. Last of all, Hiry ’s battle ensign and the admiral’s
flag were lowered. There was an ominous braying of bugles–the ship’s crew
were playing Kimigayyo, Japan’s national anthem, as the flags were taken down
for the last time.99
It has been noted by another historian that your average Western admiral
would surely have forgone the necessity of keeping “800 crewmen standing
around for over half an hour on a flaming, badly listing carrier, while he
indulged his taste for melodrama.”100 But in Japan it’s important to observe the
niceties, regardless of the immediate circumstances surrounding them. Even the
wounded were in attendance. Bomber maintenance chief Arimura, despite his
serious injuries, remembered watching the flags come down from where he lay
on the flight deck.101 Now, with the ceremonies concluded at 0315, Captain
Kaku finally gave the order for the exodus to get under way. There was no panic.
Arimura was carried to the aft end of the flight deck with the other injured men.
He was terribly thirsty and called out for water. His punctured lung was turning
every breath into a bloody froth, and one of the men nearby said that if he drank
any water, he would die. Another sailor demurred, saying “Yosh! (It’ll be all
right!),” and instead handed Arimura a beer. If the maintenance chief were
destined shortly for the hereafter, far better to meet it on terms of equanimity.
Arimura, however, had no intention of giving up the ghost just yet, and to him
the beer was the very nectar of the gods.
Makigumo was waiting alongside the carrier’s port side. Like Kazagumo
before her, Hiry ’s overhanging flight deck demolished her mainmast in the
process.102 First over the side was a lieutenant, clutching the emperor’s portrait.
Next came the wounded. Arimura was tied to a board and lowered to the
destroyer’s deck. The wounded were soon packed into every available spot.
They were being attended to as best Makigumo’s crew might, but the conditions
for providing decent care were far from ideal. Flight Lt. Kadano Hiroshi, Hiry ’s
third-section attack aircraft buntaicho, was a typical case. His Kank had been
damaged in the morning strike on Midway, and his leg had been badly shot up
by American fighters.103 Now, the corpsmen told him the limb had to come off.
The only available space for the amputation was the deck in one of Makigumo’s
heads.104
With the crew in the process of debarking, Yamaguchi said good-bye to his
staff. It was at this point that Captain Kaku announced that he, too, was going to
share Hiry ’s fate.105 Yamaguchi understood his sentiments. “Let us enjoy the
beauty of the moon,” the admiral intoned. “How brightly it shines,” agreed Hiry
’s skipper, “It must be in its twenty-first day.”106
Lt. Cdr. Ky ma Takeo, CarDiv 2’s engineering staff officer, took this
opportunity to intercede with Captain Ito, Yamaguchi’s chief of staff. Surely, Ky
ma said, the admiral’s staff ought to try to rescue him, even if they had to do it
by force. Ito demurred, saying that even if the staff physically carried him off the
ship, the strong-willed admiral would surely kill himself later. Yamaguchi
having declared his intention to stay on board, Ito felt that the “thoughtful way
would be to let him do as he wishes.” Thereupon, Ito approached Yamaguchi
directly, declaring that the admiral’s staff had decided that they wished to stay
with him to the end. Yamaguchi would have none of it. “I am very pleased and
touched by the staff’s desire to remain with me, but you young men must leave
the ship. This is my order.”107 The same stern reply was given to Hiry ’s
executive officer, Commander Kanoe Takashi, when he suggested that the
carrier’s senior officers should stay with Captain Kaku.108 Failing mass suicide,
Ky ma suggested to chief of staff Ito that they ask the admiral for a souvenir to
remember him by. Yamaguchi swept off his cap, handing it to Ito. The admiral
and his staff then drank a final toast of farewell.109
The ship’s paymaster noted that there was still a lot of money in the ship’s
safe and wondered what ought to be done with it. “Leave it where it is,” Captain
Kaku said, “we’ll need it to cross the River Styx!” To which Yamaguchi piped
in, “That’s right; we’ll need it for a square meal in hell!”110 Ito asked if the
admiral had any final messages before they departed. “Yes,” responded
Yamaguchi, he had two. “Tell Admiral Nagumo that I have no words to
apologize for what has happened. I only wish for a stronger Japanese Navy, and
revenge.” The second message was for Captain Abe Toshio, the commander of
DesDiv 10, in Kazagumo. “Scuttle Hiry with your torpedoes.”111
The speech making was now at an end, and Ito and the others departed. But
it was not until 0430 that all of Hiry ’s crew finally left the ship, with Ito and Ky
ma being the last off. As Ky ma climbed down a rope into a small boat, he lost
his composure at the prospect of losing “the greatest man he had ever met in
[his] whole life.” He had been on the admiral’s staff since December 1940 and
was the longest-serving staff member in Yamaguchi’s entourage.112 Looking
back at the still-burning Hiry , he could see Kaku and Yamaguchi standing on
the bridge, waving.113 What happened to the captain and admiral after that is
anyone’s guess. They certainly could not have made their way below to their
cabins, as these were in the bow of the ship, which was wrecked by the fires.
Where Kaku and Yamaguchi met their end will remain forever unknown.
At 0510, with the sun already rising in the east, Makigumo prepared to
carry out Yamaguchi’s final wish.114 Kazagumo was already departing, leaving
just Hiry ’s plane guard destroyer to do the deed. As a precaution, Makigumo’s
navigator, Lieutenant Commander Tamura, was sent back to the carrier to ensure
that everyone was off the vessel. Climbing back on board, he made his way to
the bridge, but found no one there. Tamura returned to Makigumo The
loudspeakers suddenly blared out on the destroyer, “We are right now going to
torpedo and sink Hiry . Battle stations torpedo port side, target Hiry bearing 90
degrees. Prepare to fire.” Everywhere on board men were weeping, her survivors
clutching the railings. Makigumo fired a single Type 93 torpedo. It ran too deep
and missed her. Circling to starboard to double the range, her skipper,
Commander Fujita Isamu, fired a second. This one hit fairly far forward, near the
ship’s starboard bow gangway. The explosion was spectacular, shoving the
carrier’s prow out of the water and bouncing it to port.115 Unusually, there was
no huge water column, as was the case with most Type 93 hits. Most likely the
fish had struck far enough forward that it had simply blown through the
relatively narrow hull structure there, venting much of its force laterally into the
water beyond.116 Whatever the nature of the hit, Commander Fujita apparently
judged that Hiry would not survive it. He turned Makigumo for home.
It was at this very juncture that a group of men suddenly appeared on Hiry
’s flight deck, waving their deck caps at the departing destroyer. But she did not
come about. Fearing air attack as day broke, Commander Fujita apparently
judged it better to simply leave the newfound survivors behind.117 Rather
callously, he blinkered back to the men–a signal whose meaning is now lost, as
none of the survivors on Hiry ’s flight deck had the ability to decipher his
message.118 Then he cleared the area. This is all rather strange, because Fujita
apparently had every opportunity to promptly come about and rescue these
hapless survivors in a timely fashion, thus saving destroyer Tanikaze from the
rather long, dangerous, and ultimately futile mission of mercy that she would be
ordered to perform on the morrow.
On board Nagara, Nagumo and his staff were grappling with how to atone for
their failures in battle. Chief of staff Kusaka was finally having his burns and
other wounds attended to in Nagara’s sick bay when his second in command,
Captain ishi, approached him. The other staff members had made up their
minds to commit suicide, ishi said, and he urged Kusaka to convince Nagumo
to do the same.119
In response, Kusaka ordered ishi to assemble the staff in the sick bay.
Then he laid into them. “I am against suicide,” he told them firmly. His voice
rising, he continued, “You are just like hysterical women; first you get excited
over easy victories and now you are worked up to commit suicide because of a
defeat! This is no time for Japan for you to say such a thing. Why not think of
turning a misfortune into a blessing through your efforts?” He ended by saying
that he was going to tell Nagumo of his opinion.120
Kusaka was as good as his word and went to find Nagumo in his cabin. The
commander of First Air Fleet, to Kusaka, appeared very downcast. Kusaka
wasted no time in strongly voicing his opinions that suicide would solve nothing
and that Japan needed them to continue their efforts. Nagumo didn’t perk up
noticeably, replying to Kusaka that he appreciated his advice, but adding, “you
must understand that everything a Commander in Chief does cannot be by
reason.”121
To Kusaka, this clearly indicated that Nagumo was still contemplating
suicide. “Come on,” he continued, “What can you accomplish with a defeatist
attitude?”
Nagumo at this point relented. “Very well. I will never commit a rash act.”
In fact, there is every indication that Nagumo never rallied completely from
this stunning defeat. His son recalled afterward that the admiral said nothing of
Midway until 1944, when he was about to depart for the island of Saipan to take
command of its garrison. After swearing them to secrecy, he conveyed the news
of the terrible calamity to his two sons. Breaking into tears as he relayed his
story, he described the destruction of his force and the slaughter of his men.122
Nagumo left shortly thereafter, and would never return to Japan, eventually
committing suicide as the final defense of Saipan collapsed around him.

Nagumo’s former flagship was about to meet her demise. Much like her fires,
the debate over what to do with Akagi had sputtered fitfully all night on board
Yamato. Now, as dawn approached, the argument blazed up again. Had the
Americans been defeated by Kond ’s eastward rush, it was conceivable that they
could have towed Akagi back to Japan.123 Indeed, even as late as 0220, Kond
had radioed Captain Ariga of DesDiv 4 asking Ariga to “Inform condition of
Akagi immediately.”124 However, with daylight coming on, American airpower
would clearly prevent Akagi’s being saved.
To Captain Kuroshima, Akagi’s impending demise was symbolic of the
ruination of the operation as a whole.125 It was simply unthinkable that the
flagship should be scuttled. Weeping in frustration, he shouted, “We cannot sink
the Emperor’s warships with the Emperor’s own torpedoes!”126 Staff officer
Watanabe remembered that with Kuroshima’s anguished outburst, “Virtually all
the members of Yamamoto’s staff choked and stopped breathing.”127 It had been
a long night, and Combined Fleet’s staff was at the point of emotional collapse.
To Chief of Staff Ugaki, Akagi’s miserable fate was, of course, a cause for
great regret. He couldn’t help shedding a few tears for his commander in chief,
guessing Yamamoto’s feelings for his old ship. Yet, in the end, as Ugaki
realized, “sentiment is sentiment, and reason is reason.”128 Yamamoto concluded
the same thing. To do otherwise was to unnecessarily risk the other units still
around her, or worse yet, to potentially allow her to fall into enemy hands. When
he finally spoke, it was in grave, deliberate tones. “I was once the captain of
Akagi,” he said, “and it is with heartfelt regret that I must now order that she be
sunk.” Answering Kuroshima’s concerns over the manner of her disposal, he
added, “I will apologize to the Emperor for the sinking of Akagi by our own
torpedoes.”129
At 0450 the word finally came down to Captain Ariga that Akagi was to be
scuttled, some seventeen and a half hours after the beginning of her ordeal. Each
ship of DesDiv 4 was to fire a Type 93 torpedo from a distance of between 1,000
and 1,500 meters.130 Ariga’s flagship Arashi formed Nowaki, Hagikaze, and
Maikaze into line behind her, and they passed up Akagi’s starboard side from
astern at twelve knots. Not unlike soldiers in a firing squad, each destroyer
launched a single torpedo as they swept by. Then Ariga’s formation cut in front
of Akagi’s bow, heading north to rejoin Nagumo.131 Two or three torpedoes
slammed into the carrier’s starboard side, heaving enormous waterspouts into the
air. When the mist subsided, the men crowded along the railings could see Akagi
quietly bowing her proud head in surrender to the sea. As she nosed under,
everyone on board the destroyers broke into shouts of “Banzai! Akagi banzai!”
By 0520 Japan’s most famous carrier lifted her stern into the air, briefly
exposing her mighty propellers. Then she was gone “as if pulled down by a huge
hand” as Maikaze’s commanding officer described it, carrying 267 crewmen
with her into the abyss.132 Nothing but enormous bubbles remained on the
surface to mark her grave.
19

Retreat

The morning sun rising over Nagara’s stern mocked the limp national
standard hanging there. Even as Akagi was sliding down into oblivion, Nagara’s
bow was pointed west, carrying Nagumo ever closer to the Main Body. Around
the diminutive flagship clustered a sadly shrunken formation. Kirishima and
Haruna, now the largest ships in Nagumo’s fleet, plodded stolidly along on
either side. All around Nagara, their decks carpeted with survivors, paced the
force’s destroyers. The carrier men, still in shock from the previous day’s ordeal,
had spent the night sleeping exposed on the tan linoleum decks of their former
escorts. Now, with light creeping over the horizon, they continued to lie where
they had fallen, too exhausted or injured to move.
Nagumo’s flight operations commenced at dawn, but they were a pale
shadow of yesterday’s undertakings. On board the cruisers and battleships,
solitary engines coughed to life, echoing hollowly over the water. It was nothing
like the dull roar of entire squadrons that had thrummed with life the day before.
At 0441, Chikuma sent up her No. 1 and No. 4 aircraft to make sure the
Americans weren’t following their retreat.1 It wasn’t much in the way of
airpower, but it would have to do, for far from going “into his shell,” Nagumo
was actually looking for openings to renew the battle with what meager assets
were left to him.
No fighters would be overhead this day, and the weather was clear. Men
that had cursed the fog a few days earlier now prayed for its return. Defeated,
Nagumo and his men knew they had no choice now but to steel themselves for
whatever dreadful consequences might accrue from their current state. If
American carrier aircraft found them now, they would be almost powerless to
repel their attacks. These same men remembered running rampant through their
beaten foes just a few months before. Allied warships in the waters around Java;
merchant ships and pleasure craft packed with civilians trying to flee the
impending falls of Singapore and Surabaja–they had cut them all down like
wolves among the sheep. Now the tables were turned, and it was the worst
feeling in the world. They could expect no mercy.

On board Yamato, Admiral Yamamoto had also rallied somewhat. Though he

knew that the odds were distinctly against him, he had decided to try to salvage
what he could from the situation. However, he had precious little to work with.
His forces were essentially devoid of air cover, whereas the Americans now
possessed total air supremacy. Even when Kond and Nagumo rejoined his fleet,
he would have to contend with a dwindling fuel supply. Nagumo’s ships would
be packed with survivors, many of them wounded. And he had no clear idea of
the enemy’s intentions.
Nevertheless, he retained enough of a sense of opportunism to recognize
that since the American carriers were near at hand, operations in the Aleutians
could proceed unmolested. Kakuta’s carriers would continue steaming south, of
course. But Hosogaya’s Northern Force could invade Kiska and Attu, albeit this
couldn’t occur until the 7th. Hosogaya’s force already had the same idea and
asked permission to carry out their invasion despite its being canceled the
previous day.2 After conferring with his staff, Yamamoto cut orders authorizing
what Ugaki termed the “devil-may-care” landing operations, which resulted in
Hosogaya heading northeast once again at 1000.3
Yamamoto’s immediate problem, however, was that sunrise had found his
Main Body all alone on the high seas, despite the fact that Nagumo’s forces were
to have joined up with him about this time. Yet even from high atop Yamato’s
mighty fire-control director, there was still no sign of Kid Butai. Kond , at
least, was on schedule, with his Second Fleet closing with the Main Body by
0815.4 Yet Yamamoto was irritated that the rendezvous with Nagumo had failed.
H sh was ordered to launch a few of her old torpedo planes to search for Kid
Butai. Yamamoto had little time to waste this morning. He needed to know
Mobile Fleet’s course and position ASAP if he didn’t want confusion to reign
over his forces. Dutifully, the ancient little carrier huffed and puffed into the
wind, struggling against a rather heavy swell. Her skipper, Captain Umetani
Kaoru, would later earn a moment’s commendation from Ugaki for “completing
her duty with a small number of planes in the face of bad weather.”5 One by one,
the old torpedo planes rolled down her pitching deck, as H sh sent forth her
small but tangible contribution to the battle’s history.

One of H sh ’s planes discovered Nagumo in short order, steaming a bit to the

north and east of Yamamoto’s course. After a brisk exchange of messages,
Nagumo was able to set a converging course. Chikuma would subsequently sight
the reassuring pagoda superstructures of the Main Body thirty-seven kilometers
distant at 1205. By 1300 CruDiv 8 was taking station within the Main Body,
though the last of the destroyers would not close with Yamamoto till 1700.6
However, far more interesting than the discovery of Nagumo’s truant force
would be a startling encounter had by another of H sh ’s planes just a short
time later. At around 0700, not long after takeoff, one of these aircraft
unexpectedly stumbled across Admiral Yamaguchi’s flagship, drifting on the
blue Pacific. Hiry was still visibly burning but seemed in no immediate danger
of sinking. The pilot passed right down her length from bow to stern, then
banked back over her starboard beam, with the aircraft’s observer taking
photographs as they went. His snapshots froze Hiry near the end of her dreadful
ordeal and remain among the most dramatic photographs of the war in the
Pacific. Perhaps most amazing of all, the aviators could clearly see men standing
on the flight deck, waving their caps! H sh ’s plane began tapping out a
sighting report at 0720.7
The men in question were the same crewmen who had unsuccessfully tried
to flag down Commander Fujita and Makigumo about two hours earlier. They
had been understandably heartened to see H sh ’s plane. After its departure,
these crewmen

19-1: Hiry burning on the morning of June 5, 1942, as photographed by one of
H sh ’s Type 96 carrier attack planes, piloted by Warrant Officer Nakamura
Shigeo. This photo, taken by the aircraft’s commander, Special Service Ensign
Oniwa Kiyoshi, clearly shows the enormous hole in the forward flight deck, the
result of four bomb hits. A portion of the forward elevator has been blown
against the forward end of the island. The ship is still afire amidships. Note, too,
the apparent absence of any list.8 (Naval Historical Center)

retreated to the boat deck to await a rescue. However, at around 0830, they
were surprised to discover that they were not alone. Hearing voices, they went
back topside, where they unexpectedly encountered a party of over thirty men
crouched down on the flight deck.
These newcomers were the survivors of Cdr. Aimune Kunize’s engine
room gang. Long ago, heat and smoke had driven them from the engine control
room containing the voice tube that was their communications lifeline to the
bridge. Having lost touch with Staff Engineering Officer Ky ma, the latter had
presumed them dead hours before abandoning the ship. Thus, Aimune and his
men, though far from dead, had been completely unaware of the order to
abandon ship.9 At 0510, they heard and felt the “whump” of Makigumo’s
torpedo striking home. Having not heard a peep from the bridge in hours,
Aimune judged that it was time to get out of the bowels of the ship.10 Most of
the exits were still blocked, but they had found a way up to the next deck, where
a fire was smoldering in the ship’s rice storage area.
Unfortunately, there was apparently no way out from the long corridor they
were trapped in–the hatches at either end were blocked. Finally, one of the men
spotted light coming from one of the welds, where fire or shrapnel had punched
a small hole in the bulkhead. They were peeping into the ship’s lower hangar
deck, lit by dim sunlight.11 Aimune wasted no time in sending someone back
below to fetch a hammer and chisel–if they couldn’t find an exit, they’d make
one instead. Eventually, they managed to chisel a narrow opening large enough
for a man to climb through.
Making their way into the hangar after 0800, they found everything
deserted and strangely quiet. Fires were still burning here and there, but more
unnerving was the sunlight streaming into the hangar through the enormous hole
that had been blown in the flight deck. Finally making their way topside and
looking about, they could see that the ship had been abandoned hours before.
Commander Aimune, Ensign Mandai, and the men were understandably furious
and dejected.12 Worse, the men could see water slowly swirling on to the hangar
deck forward. Ineffective as Makigumo’s hit had been, Hiry clearly wasn’t
going to float forever.
To Commander Aimune, the situation appeared hopeless. Dropping onto
the flight deck, he thanked the men for their good efforts and prepared for the
end. Ens. Mandai, utterly spent by the long night’s action, dozed off, only to be
awakened by the small band of survivors from Hiry s fantail. They quickly
reported the exciting news of a Japanese plane having flown overhead earlier. It
was clear from their description that it had been a carrier aircraft–it even had
fixed landing gear.13 This unexpected news gave Aimune’s party renewed hope.
If there had been a Japanese carrier aircraft overhead, they might be rescued
yet.14 The problem was that Hiry was beginning to sink noticeably by the bow–
they didn’t have much time left to escape.
Leading the party down to the ship’s fantail, Aimune found two launches
still lashed to the deck, and a thirty-foot cutter already in the water immediately
astern the ship. They set to work freeing the launches, but Hiry began pitching
down to take her final plunge. Aimune told the men to jump in and swim for the
cutter.15 Over the side they went. Ensign Mandai hit the water and dove deep.
When he made it back to the surface, he looked over his shoulder in awe. There
were Hiry ’s giant propellers, coming up out of the water over his head, flashing
wetly in the sun. He turned and swam like the devil,

19-2: The other classic shot of Hiry on the morning of 5 June. Hiry ’s deck-
edge radio aerials have been raised into the vertical position, undoubtedly to
avoid fouling the destroyers that were near her fighting the fires. The ship is still
afire and appears to be somewhat down by the bow. (Naval Historical Center)

not wanting to be sucked under as Hiry went to her grave. The next time he
looked back, she was gone, carrying 392 of her crew with her. Shortly thereafter,
an enormous undersea rumble announced her final demise. Aimune and thirty-
eight of the men made it into the cutter. Their watches had all stopped working
between 0907 and 0915, putting a reasonable time box around the moment of
Hiry ’s final sinking.16
The men found the cutter stocked with hardtack, water, tallow, and beer.17
They were confident that Yamamoto would return for them soon. But, in fact,
they would be adrift for the next fourteen days, until being spotted by an
American PBY and recovered by the seaplane tender Ballard on 19 June. Along
the way, they were to suffer many hardships. Four of the men died of their
wounds or exposure before being rescued; a fifth died the night after being
brought on board Ballard. Commander Aimune, for all his wiliness in getting his
men out of Hiry ’s bowels, demonstrated less concern for them once they were
in the boat together. Despite their dire collective circumstances, he insisted on
consuming more than his fair share of the food and beer.18 While he didn’t know
it at the time, he very nearly ended up as shark chum as a result of his
insensitivity. A thirty-foot open boat drifting on the Pacific was rather a
misguided place to pull rank over an extra bottle or two of Asahi biiru!19

As it happened, the Americans were having their own problems this morning,
and many of them stemmed from submarine Tambor. For one thing, she had not
managed to launch a torpedo attack against the cripples of CruDiv 7. Mogami’s
twelve-knot speed of advance had proved enough, barely, for the Japanese ships
to stay ahead of the submerged American submarine.20 More critically, as
mentioned previously, Tambor s skipper, Lt. Cdr. John Murphy, had failed to
describe the enemy’s course or speed of advance adequately, leaving Raymond
Spruance (who didn’t receive Murphy’s message until 0400) in the dark
concerning the Japanese force’s intentions.
The time from midnight to dawn was critical in positioning Spruance’s
forces for the following day’s operations. He had kept what they felt to be a safe
distance throughout the night, intending to avoid entanglements with any
Japanese forces in the area. Spruance personally didn’t believe that the Japanese
force Tambor had spotted would still be intent on attacking the island after the
pummeling they had taken on the 4th. But the potential downside of being wrong
wasn’t worth the risk.21 As such, he didn’t come westward until he knew the
Japanese were retreating, which Tambor did not relay until after 0600. Had
Spruance had this information in hand sooner, it would have measurably
increased his odds of inflicting greater harm on the enemy than was to be the
case. Nimitz, an ex-submariner, was understandably furious with Murphy’s
performance, subsequently relieving him of command.22 In fact, the American
submarines as a whole had performed poorly. Of twelve boats, only Nautilus
(the oldest of the lot) had actually managed to attack the enemy.23
Beyond not being optimally positioned for launching follow-up operations,
American airpower was also badly depleted. Midway’s various squadrons,
except for the PBYs, had been savaged. The Marines were down to just four
fighters and about twelve dive-bombers.24 Many of the other aircraft left on the
atoll were either unflyable junk or too badly shot up to participate in combat.
Midway had, in fact, been flying damaged aircraft back to Hawaii during the
night–a flight of four B-17s

19-3: Sinking locations of Japanese aircraft carriers at Midway.

was waiting to take off even as Tanabe’s I-168 had been shelling the
lagoon.25 Dawn on the 5th therefore found the atoll’s airpower nearly crippled.
Based on Tambor’s initial reports, though, the first item of business for
Midway was to attempt to localize the Japanese units Murphy had sighted.
Midway’s Catalinas began taking off at 0415, fanning out in an arc to the west
from 020 degrees to 250 degrees.26 Today, though, the PBYs would only search
out to 250 miles. Capt. Cyril Simard’s primary concern was ensuring that the
atoll was not about to be invaded. If an invasion fleet materialized, the PBYs in
the air needed the endurance to return all the way to Pearl Harbor without
refueling. This had serious repercussions for Spruance, though, as it essentially
deprived his carriers of longer-ranged scouting assets. In so doing, Simard also
lessened the odds of Spruance’s locating Nagumo and Yamamoto.
Spruance’s own air formations were scarcely in better shape than
Midway’s. Split between Hornet and Enterprise were a total of around sixty
attack aircraft, plus fighters–about a full carrier’s worth. The Japanese would
surely have traded places with him this morning, but Spruance’s hand was not
strong enough for him to want to push his luck. While he had sufficient
Dauntlesses in hand to project meaningful firepower, many of them would need
to be devoted to scouting activities.
Beyond locating and attacking the Japanese, the other major task was trying
to save Yorktown. Under the Hughes’s watchful presence, she had survived the
night and by morning appeared to be in no worse shape than she had been twelve
hours earlier. Her commanding officer, Captain Elliott Buckmaster, had
meanwhile succeeded in convincing Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher that the carrier
could still be saved.27 He wanted to put a handpicked party of salvagers on board
the carrier, try and restore power, and get her out of the area. Fletcher assented.
In fact, on the night of the 4th, Chester Nimitz had already ordered minesweeper
Vireo and the fleet tug Navajo, which were at Pearl and Hermes Reef, and
French Frigate Shoals, respectively, to begin moving toward Yorktown.
Unfortunately, the men Buckmaster felt he needed were scattered across all the
various vessels of TF 17, which had rescued the carrier’s crew. Transferring
them onto the destroyer Hammann took until 1127, at which point she began
heading back toward Yorktown.

Back on board Yamato, H sh ’s sighting report of Hiry reached a

flabbergasted Yamamoto and Ugaki at around 0730. Yamato flashed a message
to Nagumo: “Has the Hiry sunk? Advise of developments and position.”28 For
his part, Nagumo was just as confused by the news as his superiors. At 0820 the
word flashed out to Tanikaze: “According to reconnaissance by H sh plane at
0720, the Hiry was burning in position FU RO RI 43 (32°-10’N, 178°-50’E). A
number of survivors were on deck. Investigate condition and take off
survivors.”29 Commander Katsumi Motoi duly swung his ship out of formation
and raced eastward back toward Hiry and the enemy. As events would prove,
she was to have a long, dangerous day atoning unfairly for her sisters’ earlier
mistakes.
Scarcely had word about Hiry ’s mysterious nonsinking been received than
news reached Nagumo concerning another derelict. At 0652 a garbled message
from Chikuma’s No. 4 search plane had been intercepted by Nagara. It seemed
to mention an enemy carrier. At 0800 Chikuma blinkered a full rebroadcast to
Nagara: No. 4 had sighted an “enemy Yorktown-class carrier listing to
starboard [sic] and drifting in position bearing 111 degrees, distance 240 miles
from my takeoff point. One destroyer is in the vicinity.”30 In due course, word
went out to Tanabe’s I-168, which was still loitering near Midway.31 He shortly
set a new course to the northeast. It would take him a day to reach his new
target, but from all reports, it didn’t look as if this particular American carrier
was going anyplace soon.

The Americans were beginning to get back their own scouting reports by now.
At 0630 a PBY picked up Mogami’s and Mikuma’s trails. In Mikumd’s case,
there literally was a trail, as she was streaming a ribbon of bunker oil from her
damaged fuel tanks. This PBY transmitted that it had detected “two battleships,”
bearing 264, 125 miles from Midway, on a course of 265 at a speed of fifteen
knots.32 A second PBY amplified this report, describing two large capital ships,
both damaged, and one leaking oil.33
Captain Sakiyama of Mikuma was well aware they had been sighted,
sending word to his superiors at 0623 that his position was 28°-10'N, 179°-30’W
speed twelve knots.34 Though Mikuma was capable of nearly full speed,
Sakiyama was loath to abandon sister Mogami. Whatever attacks came,
Sakiyama resolved that he and Soji would face them together. They both knew
that the main Japanese forces were well to the north and west at this time, but
Captain Sakiyama had wisely opted to steer due west, so as to put as much ocean
between them and their enemies as possible. There would be time enough later
to figure out how to rejoin the Main Body. The sight of an American PBY at
0630, though, meant that the jig was up far sooner than either ship would have
wished.
Midway lost no time in attacking the cripples, ordering the remnants of
VMSB-241 to take off immediately. At 0700 Capt. Marshall “Zack” Tyler, the
squadron’s third commander in two days, led out a flight of a dozen dive-
bombers–six Dauntlesses and a like number of SB2Us, divided into two
sections.35 About forty miles away from the target, the Marine aviators easily
picked up Mikuma’s glistening exudation, and turned to follow it. Shortly
thereafter, the two Japanese ships hove into view.
Capt. Tyler’s Dauntless squadron attacked from out of the sun at 10,000
feet. The older Vindicators, led by Capt. Richard Fleming, opted for a glide-
bombing attack from 4,000 feet.36 Mikuma and Mogami, despite their damage
and very low speed, proceeded to throw up a veritable torrent of antiaircraft fire.
Tyler’s men went first, but Mogami’s heavy fire meant all they could manage
was to sequentially deposit their bombs in the water alongside the cruiser.
Next came Fleming’s men. They focused their attack on Mikuma, which
was on Mogami’s port bow, and were subjected to a similarly withering barrage.
This time, though, the Japanese drew blood, as Capt. Fleming’s aircraft was
struck almost at the outset of his dive. He attempted to control his aircraft but
went flaming into the ocean.37 Accounts vary as to whether pilot or gunner
attempted to get out of their aircraft–neither survived. One thing that is clear,
though, is that despite popular folklore to the contrary, Capt. Fleming did not
crash his aircraft onto Mikuma’s No. 4 turret. The most reliable witnesses on the
American side attest that his plane crashed into the sea, and the only Japanese
source to ever state that Fleming hit the ship was in no position to witness the
event.38 The rest of Fleming’s section all missed the cruiser with their bombs.
The net result was that both Japanese cruisers emerged unscathed from their first
ordeal.39
However, more trouble was not long in coming. Almost as soon as the
American dive-bombers had been seen off, a pack of eight B-17s showed up.
Under the command of Lt. Col. Brooke E. Allen, these came in at 20,000 feet in
two elements of four aircraft each. Once again, the big four-engined bombers
merely deposited a total of thirty-nine 500-pound bombs harmlessly in the drink,
mostly around Mogami. Mikuma triumphantly signaled “although attacked by
eight B-17s at 0834, we drove them off without damage.” So far, at least, their
luck had held out. If this was the best that twenty American bombers could
manage against twelve-knot targets, they might make it out yet. Indeed, as if
buoyed by her good fortune, Mogami at 1130 cranked up to fourteen knots.40
Task Force 16 had the same information in hand as Simard and might have
attacked Mogami and Mikuma as well. But Spruance was far more interested in
knowing if there were any remaining Japanese carriers to the northwest of the
island. While waiting for a clearer picture to emerge, he turned due west at 0930,
passing only fifty miles north of Midway.41 He was now in a perfect position to
foil any renewed landing attempt while evaluating the morning’s reports.
However, instead of a clearer picture emerging, things began to get more
confusing as the morning wore on. At 0700 Midway radioed that a PBY had
detected “Two enemy cruisers bearing 286, distance 174, course 310, speed 20
knots.” Though Spruance didn’t know it, this was Kurita’s Kumano and Suzuya
steaming to rejoin Kond . At 0800, another report was received, detailing “Two
enemy battleships, 3 or 4 cruisers, 1 aircraft carrier on fire bearing 324 distance
240 [miles from Midway] course 310 speed 12.” In retrospect, the carrier was
plainly Hiry , although it is less apparent what other vessels were in her vicinity
that could have been sighted. But that wasn’t all. At 0853 another PBY sighted a
carrier “bearing 335 distance 250 from Midway course 245 at 2020 GCT [0820
local].”42 Finally, at 0907, Midway rebroadcast the following, “2000 [0800]
enemy cruisers, auxiliaries and some destroyers screening burning carrier 2
battleships well ahead of group.”43
To Spruance and his staff the overall impression was that there was indeed
an enemy carrier still out there. On the basis of the reports they already had in
hand, they were convinced that Akagi, Kaga, and S ry had been dispatched.
But so far as they knew, Hiry had only been crippled, and no one would
discount the possibility that an undiscovered fifth Japanese carrier still lurked
nearby.44 Accordingly, Spruance decided to leave Midway to the business of
dealing with the two “battleships” while he sought bigger prey to the northwest.
In the event, though, Spruance didn’t end up getting a strike off until
around 1512.45 It would have been launched an hour sooner had not a rather
bizarre incident occurred on Enterprise’s bridge. Captain Miles Browning,
Spruance’s chief of staff, drafted an attack plan that called for launching the
force’s SBDs at 1400. During the briefing, Enterprise’s aviators were informed
that they would be launching at a range of 240 miles from the contact–extreme
range for the Dauntless.46 Worse yet, upon closer examination, Browning’s plan
failed to account for the distance that the Japanese warships would most likely
have moved in the interval from launch, meaning that the actual range was closer
to 275 miles.47 Browning had also specified that the planes were to be armed
with 1,000-pound weapons–decreasing their effective range still further.
Lieutenant Shumway, slated to lead Enterprise’s attack, was concerned enough
about the outlines of the plan that he took them to Enterprise’s air group
commander, Wade McClusky, who was lying in the ship’s sick bay. McClusky
promptly went ballistic. Though wounded, he made his way up to the flag
bridge, dragging Earl Gallaher and Enterprise’s skipper, Capt. George Murray,
along with him. He confronted Browning in front of Spruance, contending that
the mission could not be carried out as planned. Browning, without explanation,
brusquely ordered the aviators to carry out their orders. McClusky thereupon
inquired if Browning had ever flown an SBD. Browning answered that he had.
McClusky then pressed him on whether he had ever flown a late-model SBD,
equipped with self-sealing tanks (which carried less fuel), armored seats, a
1,000-pound bomb, and a full load of avgas? Browning admitted he hadn’t. The
argument quickly turned openly hostile, whereupon Spruance sided with
McClusky, saying simply, “I will do what you pilots want.”48 Clearly, Spruance
had discerned from the previous day’s events that his senior aviators knew their
business. Browning stormed off the flag bridge in a rage, sulking in his cabin
until another staff member persuaded him to return to his duties.49
The upshot of this almost farcical episode was that Enterprise’s aircraft,
and Hornet’s too, had to be rearmed with 500-pound weapons before the strike
went up. By the time the switch out had occurred, middle afternoon was wasting
away. Enterprise launched thirty-two SBDs at 1512. Hornet sent up eleven
aircraft at 1530, followed by twenty-one shortly thereafter at 1543. Incredibly,
despite the new arming orders, seven of Hornet’s scouts still carried 1,000-
pound bombs. Commander Stanhope Ring, leader of Hornet’s ignominious
combat debut the day before, once again led her attack and commanded the lead
element. Lt. Cdr. Walter F. Rodee was in charge of Hornet’s second group,
including the overloaded planes of VS-8.50 All three strikes targeted the same
burning carrier–the Hiry . Of course, Hiry had already sunk.
However, there was a Japanese ship entering Ring’s bull’s-eye: destroyer
Tanikaze. She was still retracing Nagumo’s earlier retreat, searching vainly for
Yamaguchi and his flagship. In fact, Tanikaze had already been swiped at by
some planes from Midway. At 1636 a quintet of B-17s had dropped bombs on
her. All of them landed clear on either side of the bows, and Tanikaze suffered
only a drenching of her superstructure. Undeterred, Commander Katsumi
continued on his way. But seventy-odd minutes later, Ring’s twelve SBDs
appeared in the skies above the destroyer.
Ring had spotted Tanikaze at 1715, identifying her as a “light cruiser.” As it
developed, both Hornet’s and Enterprise’s planes were to consistently identify
Tanikaze as a light cruiser this day. It is likely that dusk conditions, as well as
the fact Kager - class destroyers sported an oversized forward stack, may have
compounded this impression. But Ring’s assigned target was much bigger–a
carrier and her escorts–so for the moment he pressed on, leaving Tanikaze
behind.
However, after having droned through the sky for 315 miles–well beyond
the estimated contact point–Ring had had enough.51 It was getting close to return
time, and he decided to swing around and go after the one definite enemy
sighted. After the past two days, Ring was understandably loath to let this
opponent go. At about 1808, he attacked.
It was a hectic few moments for Tanikaze, as the SBDs dove on her. Her
report shows twenty-six aircraft, dropping “very near misses” that bracketed
both bows and the starboard quarter.52 One miss off the stern was close enough
to draw blood: bomb fragments slashed through the aft No. 3 5-inch turret,
inducing an explosion that killed the entire six-man turret crew.
The reason Tanikaze rather dramatically overcounted the number of planes
attacking her is that she was, in fact, shortly assaulted by an additional pack of
dive-bombers. Enterprise’s composite squadron had been flying steadily west-
northwest toward the reported position of the damaged Japanese carrier, strung
out in a scouting line formed by nine planes of VS-6 and seven planes of VS-5.
About 100 miles away from the presumed position of the enemy carrier, they
had begun climbing. The ceiling was 13,000 feet, and visibility was hazy.53
By 1800, the expected carrier was nowhere in sight. Having overheard
Ring’s contact report, though, Enterprise’s planes began searching to the
southwest. At 1820, “a lone enemy vessel was sighted, believed to be a light
cruiser of the Katori-class, on course west, speed 20 knots.”54 Lt. Shumway
logically decided to attack this target. It was growing dark, his planes were
running low on gas, and as near as he could tell, there were no other enemy ships
in the area. The end result was more trouble for the hard-pressed Tanikaze.
Commander Katsumi must have shaken his head in frustration as he barked
out orders for yet more evasive maneuvers. The search for Hiry was proving a
distinctly hazardous undertaking, and seemed likely to cost him his own ship
before sunset. One by one, the enemy dive-bombers pushed over on him like
kingfishers. VB-3 attacked first, beginning at 1834, followed in succession by
VB-6, VS-6, and finally VS-5.
Yet once again luck was with the Tanikaze. In this, she was aided by the
growing darkness, which made it more difficult to see the fleeing ship against
the dark waters. Katsumi’s skill as a ship handler, too, was undoubted–Tanikaze
went to high speed and lurched into a series of violent “S” turns. The U.S.
Navy’s report affirms this, saying, “Because of the cruiser’s high speed,
maneuverability, and the heavy weather conditions, a very elusive dive bombing
target was presented.” As a result, most of the bombs landed fairly wide.
The other thing the Americans noticed was the large volume of antiaircraft
fire, as Tanikaze’s crew threw everything they had at the attackers. Their
prodigious efforts were rewarded. Near the end of the last attack, one stricken
SBD was seen by both sides crashing directly into Tanikaze’s wake. With tragic
irony, this SBD was piloted by none other than Lieutenant Adams of Scouting
Five, who had produced the decisive sighting of Hiry the preceding afternoon.
More than a bit frustrated, TF 16’s aviators turned and began the long,
dangerous flight home. They would eventually be recovered well after nightfall,
and only after Admiral Spruance elected to take the rather bold step of turning
on the carriers’ deck lights to guide his men home. Spruance later explained that
“If planes are to be flown so late in the day that a night recovery is likely, and if
the tactical situation is such that the commander is unwilling to do what is
required to get the planes back safely, then he has no business launching the
attack in the first place.” His men, in turn, demonstrated their own worth by
completing a near-perfect recovery sequence on board the carriers. Only one
aircraft was lost, running out of fuel just before landing. Both crewmen were
recovered.55
Tanikaze, for her part, still wasn’t quite done. At 1845 five B-17s
commenced dropping fifteen 600-and eight 300-pound bombs on her from
11,000 feet. She understandably counted eleven planes, as several of them made
more than one run. Tanikaze was not hit and, incredibly, seems to have been
indirectly responsible for knocking down a B-17. This plane, in the heat of the
attack, accidentally jettisoned its bomb bay auxiliary fuel tank along with its
bombs and was never heard from again. A second likewise ran out of fuel on the
way home and ditched. These two were the only B-17s lost in the battle.56
Finally sunset came, and Tanikaze, finding nothing in the area, was
understandably happy to quit the field and quickly sped westward to rejoin
Nagumo. Undiscovered somewhere nearby, Chief Engineer Aimune’s cutter
drifted morosely toward its eventual rescue at the hands of the enemy.

As it happened, two other Japanese destroyers had scuttled through the waters
west of Midway this afternoon, but had been lucky enough to avoid detection.
These were Arashio and Asashio, hastening to join the screen of the Mikuma and
Mogami. At 1800 they had signaled that after finishing refueling they expected
to rejoin Mogami and her sister at 0500 the following morning.57
Even if this duo had been detected, it is unlikely that they could have been
attacked. TF 16 was through with launches for the day. It was too dark, and
Asashio and her sister too far away to justify a further attempt. But Spruance
knew that there would be good targets waiting in the morning. Indeed, the latest
sighting reports received from Midway via Nimitz at 1941 actually said that one
of Midway’s patrol planes had been attacked by Japanese carrier fighters. It was
true–at 1812, as the sun dipped toward the horizon, Lt. (jg) Dale S. Newell of
VP-44 had had the dubious honor of finally sighting the Japanese Main Body.
Zuih ’s CAP thereupon received their own baptism of fire by chasing off the
American interloper.58
Lieutenant Newell had come upon Combined Fleet at an interesting
moment. Only an hour before, the last straggling destroyers of Nagumo’s fleet
had rejoined the Main Body. The Japanese were busy receiving short action
reports, and cross-decking personnel. Destroyer Isokaze had pulled alongside
Chikuma and was conscientiously sending over the fire and rescue party the
cruiser had left behind with S ry the previous morning.59 The Japanese listened
nervously to the chatter indicating enemy planes overhead, but they felt that the
approaching sunset would soon offer cover.60 Apparently it did, for other than an
unknown aircraft bombing Haruna at 1700 and scoring a near miss,61 no other
Japanese ships were attacked today.
With Yamamoto, Kond , and Nagumo now all merged into one formation,
Combined Fleet shifted from its northwest course and headed due west as dusk
drew on.62 They proceeded slowly, while that evening the destroyers transferred
Kid Butai’s survivors to Nagato and Mutsu. They were heading away from
Midway, but not necessarily away from battle. Mindful that the enemy’s pursuit
might offer renewed opportunities, Yamamoto was not quite ready to give up
yet. He would hold the Midway invasion forces on standby at a safe distance and
see what developments the next day might bring.
20

And Death to the Cripples …

As dawn’s early light broke on 6 June, the battered Second Section of

CruDiv 7 was still struggling to clear the battle zone. Mikuma remained more or
less intact, but her speed–and thus her fate–was tied to that of her wounded
sister. Shoving aside a cataract of water from her crushed prow, Mogami was
still making fourteen knots and had the possibility of doing even better.1 The sea
was moderate, and the welcome arrival of DesDiv 8 soon after dawn bolstered
the men’s spirits still further.2
Yet even now Admiral Raymond Spruance was maneuvering to abort their
escape. TF 16 now lay 350 miles northwest of Midway. At 0500 Spruance had
put up a fan of eighteen searching SBDs from Enterprise to cover his western
flank out to a distance of 200 miles. It didn’t take long for one of the Dauntlesses
to flush out the Japanese cruisers, radioing at 0645 that he had spotted one
battleship, one cruiser, and three destroyers steaming west at ten knots. Besides
an unaccountably slow speed estimate, though, a further distortion resulted when
a garble in deciphering turned the message into a report of “one carrier and five
destroyers.”3 Needless to say, this latter report–particularly its unintentional
mention of a carrier–elicited immediate interest on Enterprise’s bridge. The
reported position of the Japanese was only 128 miles southwest of TF 16.4
However, recalling the goose chase after the “damaged carrier” just the day
before, Spruance was determined to take no chances. He ordered cruisers
Minneapolis and New Orleans to launch their floatplanes to maintain contact
with this new “carrier.” However, even as these scouts were warming up, one of
Hornet’s SBDs returned at 0730 and dropped a message clarifying that it was, in
fact, two cruisers and two destroyers that had been sighted. Thus, when the
cruisers started catapulting their floatplanes at 0745, Spruance now thought he
might be dealing with two separate enemy formations, one of which included a
carrier.5 Spruance ordered speed increased to twenty-five knots on a southwest
course and instructed Hornet to launch her attack group. Enterprise would
follow suit as quickly as possible.
 Hornet already had a force of SBDs spotted on deck for just such a
contingency. Shortly before 0800, she began launching the first of eleven aircraft
of VB-8. Another fourteen SBDs, drawn mostly from VS-8 but including one
apiece from VS-5 and VS-6, went up right after. Eight carried 500-lb bombs; the
remainder lugged 1,000-pounders. Eight Wildcat fighters accompanied them.
Considering the opponent, this was a strong strike. Leading it again was
Hornet’s Stanhope Ring, trying for one last shot at redemption.
However, the hoped-for carrier was soon to prove a chimera. After Ring’s
aircraft had departed, more of the morning’s search aircraft began landing, and
the error in transmission was quickly discovered and corrected. There was no
carrier, but there was apparently big ship game out there nonetheless. Indeed,
Spruance still believed that there might be two separate formations in proximity
to one another. At 0850 the Enterprise radioed to Ring: “Target may be a
battleship instead of a carrier. Attack!”6
By now the Japanese were fully aware of the way the morning was shaping
up. Captain Sakiyama of Mikuma had spotted two of New Orleans’s floatplanes
and opened fire on them. The Americans kept a healthy distance, maintaining
contact and guiding Ring’s strike force right to their targets, which he sighted at
0930. As far as he could tell, though, neither of the two larger ships was a
battleship.7 Remembering that two enemy forces had been reported, he prudently
withheld his attack, instead heading west to ensure that he didn’t miss any bigger
game. However, the minutes ticked by, and he saw nothing. Below, the Mikuma
and Mogami were passing by his left side. His flight had already missed the
optimum push-over point. Still seeing nothing ahead, Ring decided that one
contact in the hand was worth two in the bush. He now commenced a wide circle
around to begin a second approach from ahead and out of the sun. As the attack
began unfolding, the Mikuma flashed word at 0945 “attacked by a large number
of enemy planes and one seaplane in sight.”8 At 0950 Ring led his men into their
dives.9
The Japanese ships increased speed and began spitting out AA. As it
happened, their fire proved as effective, if not more so, than that of Kid Butai’s
carriers two days before. Despite having no air cover, the Japanese gunners shot
down two SBDs, with the loss of both of their crews.10 Ring was once again
destined for disappointment, as his section managed no better than a “paint-
scraper” near miss alongside Mikuma. Scouting Eight had a bit more success
with Mogami, connecting with two bombs. One landed atop No. 5 turret, killing
the entire turret crew.11 The second smashed through the aircraft deck and
started fires in the torpedo room beneath it. Now Lieutenant Commander
Saruwatari’s earlier precaution of dumping Mogami’s Type 93 torpedoes paid
off. While the bomb hit was destructive, there were no secondary explosions,
and the fire was extinguished within an hour. As for DesDiv 8, both destroyers
were strafed but emerged otherwise unscathed.12
Surveying the results after reforming his aircraft, Ring answered a query
from Enterprise by radioing: “No CV sighted. Attacked CA supported by 3 DD.
One hit. Enemy course 270, speed 25. No Air Opposition.”13 The last part was
significant, as it confirmed that there was no Japanese carrier in the area. This
was a disappointment, but it seemed possible that the reported “battleship” was
still lurking out there somewhere.
Watching Ring’s aviators depart, Mikuma’s skipper surely wished for a
Japanese carrier near at hand as well, albeit for entirely different reasons. But the
fact was that Captain Sakiyama’s small squadron was alone on the sea, far
distant from Kurita’s other two cruisers, and even farther from any help the Main
Body might provide. A quick tally of the damage was compiled, and then a
situation report flashed to Yamamoto and Kond at 1045. The news still wasn’t
all bad. Mogami had only received “light damage,” and “three” enemy aircraft
had been shot down.14
However, at exactly the same moment Sakiyama was sending his report,
further trouble was being sent his way. One by one, thirty-one SBDs began
rolling down Enterprise’s flight deck as she followed up Hornet’s strike with
one of her own. Like Hornet’s morning strike, this was a polyglot unit–SBDs
from VB-3, VS-5, VB-6, and VS-6 were all participating. Sixteen planes of VS-
5 and VS-6 combined to form one squadron, with planes from VB-6 forming a
third division. With them went twelve Wildcat fighters. Overall command of the
formation fell on Lt. Wallace “Wally” Short of Yorktown.15
At 1057, while Short was still orbiting TF 16 awaiting departure of the last
of his aircraft, he received an additional message indicating that the Japanese
battleship was apparently somewhat farther ahead of the assigned target.16 Not
surprisingly, he was ordered to seek it out first. A few minutes later came yet
another change. Given the importance of the target, the last three torpedo planes
remaining from VT-6 would be coming up to join him as well. At 1115 the
SBDs formed up and departed, boring away westward in lazy “S” turns to let the
slower TBDs puff along behind. The dive-bombers climbed to 22,500 feet,
leaving the torpedo planes at low altitude.17
Captains Sakiyama and Soji had changed their own plans in the meantime.
The implication of the continued presence of New Orleans’s floatplanes was
obvious and mandated a response. At 1100 the Mikuma radioed that they were
under pursuit by enemy aircraft and surface ships. They were consequently
shifting course to the southwest to make a run for Wake’s air cover, the island
being 710 miles distant.18 Yamamoto’s staff on board Yamato could only listen
with growing consternation and fear for the safety of the two cruisers. Their
fears were well founded, because the time had finally come for CruDiv 7 to pay
the check.

At noon Mikuma was still leading Mogami west-southwest. Both ships were
making close to twenty knots, with the two destroyers in screen. Great waves
were being raised by Mogami’s shattered bow as she bulled her way through the
water at the best speed she could manage. This last-gasp effort was putting a
severe strain on the forward bulkheads, but Captain Soji dared not slow down
now. It had been two hours since the last American attack, and they were
creeping ever closer to Wake. However, they were still at least a day’s steaming
from friendly fighter cover. And now, the instrument of their final ruin came into
view.
Wally Short’s strike group had sighted the fleeing Japanese at 1211.
However, for the moment he did not alter course. The Japanese watched as the
Americans flew by, heading west in search of the nonexistent battleship. But
even though the SBDs were headed out of the area, coming up from astern were
the American Wildcats and the three TBDs of VT-6. The fighter leader, Lt. Jim
Gray, feared the TBDs might attack the cruisers solo, so he led his fighters down
for a closer look at the targets Short had just bypassed. The Japanese responded
with another blistering AA barrage, spitting defiance back at the Wildcats.
It may well be that because of her damaged bow Mogami appeared fore-
shortened and smaller than her sister. For whatever reason, though, Gray and
other American pilots consistently mistook the pair for one battleship and one
heavy cruiser, even though Mikuma and Mogami were identical. This had an
effect on the postbattle reports the Americans would file regarding this attack.
However, Gray was impressed by the robust defense and large size of Japanese
cruisers. He was convinced that an oversight had been made, and that at least
one of the two was the “battleship” that everyone was seeking this morning. He
promptly radioed Short, advising him to reverse course.
Over the radio, Gray’s pilots were remarking on the warm reception they
were receiving, while Short and his men listened with growing concern. Behind
them was a perfectly valid target. Ahead of their windscreens, despite excellent
visibility, was … nothing. All they could see was sun and empty ocean. They
had already flown thirty miles west of the Japanese ships when Gray anxiously
radioed that one of the passed targets appeared to be a battleship. That was the
last straw. With a curt signal, Short brought his entire squadron around to the
east, commencing a long, high-speed approach from about 21,000 feet. His
SBDs were descending from out of the sun and downwind, converging rapidly
with the Japanese ships on their opposing course of about 240 degrees.19
Mikuma was still in the lead, and it was this ship that Short and most of his
aviators targeted.
However, as they began their approach, the Japanese formation abruptly
slowed and changed course. The rearmost ship (Mogami) was coming under
attack and looping out to starboard. As it developed, not all of Wally Short’s
squadron had, in fact, followed him on his abortive westward search. The last
section in the long string of American aircraft, that of VB-3, had “departed from
the search ahead and attacked the rear CA.”20 Almost immediately, two bombs
slammed into Mogami, one amidships on the aircraft deck and the other forward
of the bridge, inflicting medium damage.21
However, as a result of her sister’s evasive maneuvers, Mikuma in the fore
began circling to starboard to conform to Mogami. This had the effect of
reversing Mikumd’s relative positioning, making her now tail-end Charlie in the
formation. Thus, Mikuma had her attention distracted, and as a result, the
Americans caught her flat-footed. Short pushed over at 14,000 feet and was in a
70-degree dive on her when she suddenly spotted the new menace and opened “a
heavy stream of automatic gun fire.”22 She would keep this up until the first
bomb hit.
As Mikuma came out of her starboard turn, the first hit was delivered
against the roof of the No. 3 main turret, directly in front of the bridge. The
explosion shattered the turret, blowing a sheet of lethal fragments across the
front of the ship’s superstructure.23 Several officers, including the commander of
the starboard AA guns, were killed outright. Worse, this initial hit coincided
precisely with Captain Sakiyama’s sticking his head out a manhole cover on the
top of the bridge. Severely wounded, he lost consciousness immediately and
slumped backward into the bridge.
Commander Takashima Hideo, Mikumas executive officer, leapt to take
charge. But two more bombs slammed home, blasting through the decks to
shatter the starboard forward engine spaces.24 Great blasts of smoke and fire
boiled up, and Mikuma was staggered. Bombs were still coming down, crashing
into the sea and drenching the ship with towering columns of water.
Takashima tried to increase speed and evade, but his efforts were cut short
abruptly. Even before the last of Short’s SBDs had dropped, two more bombs
blasted the aircraft deck and tore down into the port aft engine room, exploding
with devastating force.25 Immediately, a huge fire broke out in the vicinity of the
torpedo tubes. Mikuma quickly slobbered to a halt. She had been crushed by at
least five direct hits and two close near misses (and possibly more). On board
Mogami, her officers and men watched with sinking hearts as their would-be
rescuer now became substitute victim. With angry spears of fire and dark black
smoke pouring from her superstructure, from Mogami’s bridge Mikuma
appeared so obviously finished that at 1420 Mogami radioed as much back to
Yamamoto.26 Though sorely damaged herself, Mogami began closing her sister
to render assistance.
High above, Wally Short collected his planes and found to his delight that
he had suffered no losses. Arguably, this was true only because the three TBDs
from VT-6 prudently declined to attack when they observed the accurate AA fire
the Japanese ships were throwing up. The American torpedo plane squadrons
had lost too much already, and Spruance had made it crystal clear to their pilots
that they were not to risk themselves if the Japanese had so much as a single AA
gun in operation.27 As a result, the American fliers began their journey back to
Enterprise at full strength, having almost certainly wrecked one of their targets.
“Almost certainly,” because even in the immediate aftermath of the
American attack, there remained still some slight doubt as to Mikuma’s fate.
True, she was dead in the water, but two of her four engine rooms remained
operable, and it might be possible to get her underway again if her fires were put
out. There seemed to be some hope of the latter, at least initially. Though fires
were raging amidships, she appeared to be on an even keel and was not settling
visibly. Her executive officer semaphored Mogami: “I am taking command of
the ship,” and it seemed that order might be returning.28 Captain Soji did not rule
out the prospect of his Mogami, or the destroyers, towing Mikuma to safety–if
they could avoid further attacks. But within an hour of the attack, the matter was
rendered moot.
Just before 1358, the fires around Mikuma’s torpedo storage racks finally
precipitated the calamity that was almost inevitable from the moment the first
bomb landed amidships. With an appalling eruption, a number of Mikuma’s
torpedoes exploded. The entire aircraft deck was reduced to a blackened tangle
of junk, and even the mainmast came crashing down on top of the wreckage. The
ship’s superstructure was left almost unrecognizable from the funnel back to No.
4 turret. Far worse than the damage topside, though, was the damage
belowdecks. Although not obvious at first, the explosion and earlier bomb hits in
the port machinery spaces had ruptured the bottom of the cruiser.29 Mikuma
started sagging to port and settling deeper into the water. The men on board
Mogami were under no illusions regarding the inevitable outcome of this
misfortune. At 1358 she morosely radioed word of Mikuma’s explosion and
opined that there was “little prospect of her being recovered.”30
Mikuma might be doomed, but Combined Fleet was convinced there was still
an opportunity to avenge her, and they were determined to exploit it. Just before
Wally Short’s attack struck home, the main Japanese fleet had broken formation
and detached a fast striking element to lunge south in support of Sakiyama. From
the Japanese perspective, 6 June offered the possibility of a renewed carrier
battle, this time supported by their full surface strength. At 1340 Kond sent
orders to his Occupation Force and CruDiv 8, the barest details of which convey
something of the Japanese renewed excitement and hope of snatching victory
from defeat:

1. Main Force of Occupation Force, less BatDiv 3 and DesRon 2, with

CruDiv 8 destroy enemy carrier force and assist Mogami and Mikuma.
Course west.

2. Supply Force is waiting at position FU KO N 39 (30°-10'N,

167°-50'E).

3. Zuih prepare to attack enemy CV

4. Prepare to utilize full strength of all available seaplanes. Three-

seaters to search, two-seaters to attack enemy carrier with two ordinary
[SAP] bombs each.31

One of the most incredible things about this order is Zuih being ordered to
prepare her aircraft for an attack. In fact, Kond had already ordered her at 0015
to move with a single destroyer to a position to deliver air attacks to cover
CruDiv 7’s retreat.32 Zuih would later turn in an illustrious battle record, and
her captain, Obayashi Sueo, was destined to become a respected carrier skipper.
Yet the fact was that Zuih just had nine torpedo bombers to throw into the fray,
along with six Zeros and six older A5M fighters. It is stunning that the Japanese
were even considering offering battle under these terms, particularly given the
fact that Yamamoto was even now receiving signals that Mikuma and Mogami
were undergoing a heavy air attack. At this point, the Americans had at least
three times as much firepower as Zuih , H sh , and all the floatplanes the
Japanese could scrape together. To say that Yamamoto was grasping at straws
was putting it mildly, and it’s lucky for the Japanese that they didn’t come
within range of Spruance’s warbirds this day. Had they done so, the misfortunes
they had suffered on 4 June would almost certainly have been sharply
augmented.

Yamamoto didn’t know it, but his forces had just scored their biggest success of
the entire battle. Throughout the morning, Captain Elliott Buckmaster’s efforts
to save the wounded Yorktown had slowly been yielding fruit. Destroyer
Hammann had nuzzled up to her starboard side and put the captain’s salvage
party on board her just before dawn. The destroyer still lay alongside, providing
power and support as Yorktown’s crew busied themselves with remedying her
various maladies. Five other destroyers circled the carrier in ceaseless patrol.
Yorktown’s fires were now out, and her port list had already been
considerably abated by both portable pumps and counterflooding her starboard
tanks. Topside, men were cutting away many of her portside guns so as to reduce
the weight on her threatened flank. In the hangar, other sailors were lowering
spare aircraft from the overheads and shoving them over the side.33 Most
important of all, minesweeper Vireo had secured a towline to Yorktown at 1308
on the 5th and was dragging her clear at three knots.34 If things kept up, Captain
Buckmaster might yet pull off one of the war’s more masterful demonstrations
of damage control.
However, even as the Americans were laboring with a will, Lieutenant
Commander Tanabe and I-168 were moving in to put an end to this particular
feel-good story. This was precisely the sort of mission that Japanese submarines
were built and trained to perform–hunting and sinking enemy capital ships.
Japanese fleet boats were neither nimble nor terribly quiet, but there was no
denying the lethality of their torpedoes, if they could be put to use. And as luck
would have it, Tanabe would benefit from an unexpectedly promising set of
circumstances in which to set up his attack.
Having crept north toward his quarry all during the 5th, he had welcomed
the opportunity to travel on the surface once nightfall came. Throughout the
night he cruised ahead at sixteen knots, trusting in the sharp eyes and superb
night optics of his lookouts to sight his quarry before he was sighted in turn.35
Belowdecks, the crew had completed preparations for an attack. Many of the
men were too keyed up to sleep, and instead waited anxiously, chattering among
themselves as the night wore away.36
At 0410 Tanabe’s confidence in his lookouts had been rewarded, as one of
them shouted out that he had a contact off the starboard bow. The skipper
scanned the eastern horizon himself in the growing light of dawn. Finally, there
could be no doubt of it–the wounded American carrier gradually resolved itself,
almost precisely where Tanabe had expected to find her. Even with his
submarine still concealed in the westward gloom, and his target silhouetted by
the rising sun, Tanabe reacted cautiously, chopping his speed to twelve knots to
cut his wake. He submerged at 0600 as increasing visibility made his approach
ever more perilous.37
Tanabe had been determined to close as near as possible to the enemy
carrier before launching his attack. Yet, it would be tricky. Six destroyers
guarded her, and he had a healthy respect for American sonar. As luck would
have it, though, acoustic conditions were miserable. One of the American
destroyermen afterward lamented that “propeller noises could not be heard at
any range.”38 This was probably an exaggeration, but there was no denying that
the Americans were completely unaware of I-168’s stealthy approach.
Tanabe was concerned as well by the telltale wake his periscope might
make on the smooth waters and resolved to use it only sparingly during the
middle portion of his approach–once every half hour, and then only for a single
five-second exposure.39 Instead of the scope, he would navigate using his sound
gear and by dead reckoning. This was a bold move, but in his estimation of the
relative risks, Tanabe was probably right again–his greatest danger under the
acoustic conditions then pertaining was really from the hundreds of eyes on
board the various American warships guarding the crippled carrier.
Getting I-168 inside the ring of pickets to set up his attack was far from
easy. Tanabe took a visual fix on the target at 15,000 meters, and then started
moving in. Over the next four hours, he risked only occasional glances with his
periscope as he picked his way inward. But the fleeting visual sightings he did
make revealed something odd-he was not closing on the target in the fashion he
had expected. Vireo’s low-speed towing of Yorktown was apparently fouling up
his calculations ever so slightly. Finally, it was time to risk penetrating the inner
picket line, which was about 2,000 meters from the carrier.40 Tanabe knew that
no further periscope sightings would be possible until the final attack.
The American escorts were pinging away with their sonar, and Tanabe and
his men could hear them clearly.41 Tanabe rigged the vessel for depth charging
just in case, but again their luck held. I-168 apparently benefited from a strong
thermal layer, because none of the American destroyers got so much as a
whisper of an echo back from her hull. Finally, Tanabe decided it was time to
chance a sighting and raised his scope for a quick look. He was stunned to
discover Yorktown practically atop him, a mere 500 meters away.42 He could
clearly discern the faces of the American sailors on board her. Hurriedly
retracting his scope, he realized he was now too close to the target–the torpedoes
wouldn’t arm before striking home. He had to come about and open the range a
bit. This he did, finally reaching a position 1,500 meters from the carrier’s
starboard side. Tanabe noticed that during this critical juncture, the American
destroyers seemed to have ceased sonar operations entirely.43
Tanabe knew that I-168 would get only one attack, and he was determined
to make it count. The captain decided to forgo firing a spread wider than 2
degrees.44 This was an all or nothing attack–he would fire his fish in a very tight
pattern and hope that a number of them struck home.45 At about 1331, Tanabe
let fly with his first pair of Type 89 torpedoes, followed seconds later by the
second pair.46 He immediately dove to I-168’s maximum depth of 100 meters
and headed toward the target, figuring that it would be safer if he were in direct
proximity to a sinking carrier than if he were out in the open where the
American destroyers could get at him.47 In the sub’s cramped, sweaty control
room, the men counted out the seconds since the torpedoes’ launch. About forty
seconds later, they were rewarded with the sound of three powerful detonations.
Tanabe’s attack was devastating. The Americans had sighted the torpedoes
inbound, but there was nothing they could do about it. With no engine power of
her own, and still being towed by Vireo, the men on board Yorktown had little
choice but to watch the fish come in. Hammann, still nestled as she was against
Yorktown’s starboard quarter, was in exactly the same position. Tanabe’s first
fish hit Hammann dead amidships in the No. 2 fire room, blowing her in two.
Ripping away her mooring lines from Yorktown, the destroyer drifted astern and
started sinking immediately. Her crew began jumping into the water as fast as
they could. Unfortunately, Hammann’s own depth charges detonated shortly
after her stern left the surface.48 The resulting underwater explosions crushed
many of her survivors. Hammann lost 84 of her crew of 228.
Two other torpedoes rushed underneath Hammann and slammed into
Yorktown at Frames 84 and 95 on her starboard side, while the fourth missed
astern.49 These two hits finished Yorktown. Externally, her condition didn’t
change all that noticeably–Tanabe’s fish had struck on the opposite side of
Hashimoto’s, which had the effect of counterflooding the ship still further and
bringing her list down. But Yorktown’s flooding could no longer be contained.
Captain Buckmaster had his salvage party shut every watertight door they could,
but they couldn’t reach them all. The men could hear the sea pounding against
the ship’s centerline bulkhead in the spaces the latest torpedo hits had flooded.50
At 1550 Buckmaster decided that it was best to remove the salvage party to the
safety of the Vireo. He would wait out the evening in hopes that when the larger
fleet tug Navajo arrived, he would be able to put the salvage party on board
again and complete the repairs necessary to get her home. It was to be a forlorn
hope.
Tanabe, for his part, had expected the real battle to begin after he had
launched his torpedoes. Destroyers Gwin, Monaghan, and Hughes did not
disappoint him, subjecting I-168 to a series of violent depth-charging attacks
over the next two hours. By the end of it, I-168’s batteries were practically dead,
some of the battery casings having cracked and spilled sulphuric acid into the
seawater of the bilge, thereby releasing chlorine gas into the sub’s hull.51 The
fumes grew so bad that even the rats crawled out from the bilges to escape.52
Her compressed air supply had been reduced to the barest margins necessary to
blow the tanks, and her diving planes weren’t working properly. One of the
forward torpedo tube seals had leaked, partially flooding the torpedo room and
trimming the sub by the bow.53 Her lights–and then even her emergency lights–
had failed, leaving the bridge crew operating by hand lamps in the increasingly
foul air.54 By the time the Americans were through, I-168 had essentially been
reduced to a wreck.
Yet just at the moment when Tanabe had no choice but to surface, the
Americans broke off their attack. Tanabe came up at 1640, prepared for a last-
ditch fight on the surface with his deck gun. But when he emerged from the
conning tower hatch, the American destroyers were retreating, about 10,000
meters away.55 The Yorktown was nowhere in sight, leading Tanabe to believe
that he had sunk her. Not wishing to stay in the neighborhood, he ordered I-168
to start her diesels so that she could move away on the surface.
This was perhaps Tanabe’s one order this day that was less than inspired,
for the cloud of diesel smoke as the engines were fired up brought the American
destroyers down on I-168 again. Tanabe had no choice but to run for it. The
Americans bracketed his weaving boat with gunfire. However, the light was
fading, and the heavy engine exhaust created a small smoke screen for I-168 to
hide behind. Though the range was closing inexorably, none of the Americans’
shots hit. Finally, having had bare time to vent the sub’s atmosphere and
recharge her air flasks somewhat, Tanabe took her down again, reversing course
in his smoke cloud as he did so.56 This time the Americans seemed to have lost
her–their depth charging was desultory and ill aimed. Eventually, Tanabe was
able to sneak away for good. He would make it home to Kure, his fuel tanks
nearly dry, having pulled off one of the most impressive submarine victories of
the entire war.
Meanwhile, Mikuma’s executive officer, Takashima, was beginning to come to
the same conclusions regarding his ship’s likely fortunes that Mogami had
already conveyed to Yamamoto. Mikuma was visibly settling. Her midships
were a raging inferno, and there didn’t appear to be any means of bringing her
fires under control. After hearing some anxious-sounding damage-control
reports on the smoke-filled bridge, Takashima gave the order to prepare to
abandon ship. He instructed the ship’s repair parties to suspend their work aft
and instead begin dragging shoring timbers to the ship’s foredeck to construct
life rafts. Mogami and Arashio were close at hand, while Asashio circled to
provide air defense.

20-1: Mikuma under attack at 1500. An enormous explosion from a recent bomb
hit, or continuing explosions in her torpedo storage area, can be seen rising
overhead. Mogami is visible to the right. One destroyer is dimly visible between
the two; a second is barely visible to the left underneath the plume of the
explosion. (Naval Historical Center)

For the moment, no enemy aircraft were in sight, and after a few more
minutes, Takashima gave the order to evacuate. Since Mikuma was still burning
and exploding, it was too dangerous for Arashio to approach.57 Mikuma’s men
would have to make their way over to the rescue ships either by swimming or on
board rafts. The sailors started throwing timbers, vests, and anything else that
might float over the side. Then they began jumping into the sea. On the ship’s
foredeck, the gravely injured Captain Sakiyama and others of the wounded were
the first to be lowered onto the first raft. With the second raft went Mikuma’s
paymaster and her air officer, taking important documents and materials.
Splashing into the calm sea, the rafts shoved off for Arashio.
Commander Takashima watched all this stoically from Mikuma’s ruined
bridge. The reason he had sent the important materials with the second raft was
that he would not be accompanying them himself. Though Captain Sakiyama yet
lived and technically remained in command, the actual responsibility for
Mikuma had fallen to Takashima. It was he who had directed the ship’s final
efforts. As such, he saw it as his duty to share Mikuma’s fate.
So he would, and unfortunately for the Japanese, so would many hundreds
of others. In fact, the bulk of Mikuma’s crew would be lost, for hardly had
Captain Sakiyama’s raft been hauled on board Arashio when a third wave of
enemy aircraft came roaring in at 1445 to attack the hapless little force. These
were twenty-three SBDs sent up from Hornet at 1345. With TF 16 having now
closed the range to the Japanese considerably, each plane could carry the heavier
1,000-lb. bomb. This last strike didn’t have fighter cover, but by then it was clear
that none was needed.
Blazing Mikuma was a sitting duck. Mogami and Arashio, currently hove to
near her, would be in nearly as much trouble if they didn’t clear out
immediately. Frantically, the rescue ships began moving away from the stricken
cruiser. Left behind in the water were hundreds of men, cheated at the chance for
life just when it appeared they would be rescued. Hundreds of others still
remained on board the shattered Mikuma, some of them by their own preference.
One of the latter was the commander of the main battery fire-control center,
Lt. Koyama Masao. When Takashima ordered Abandon Ship, Koyama had
refused to go and instead asked his senior petty officer to be his second as he
committed hara-kiri (ritual suicide) atop a forward gun turret.58 Having not been
able to see his guns smash the enemy, he could at least perform this final service.
Against the tragic backdrop of Mikuma’s loss, many Japanese subsequently
found some comfort in the telling of Lieutenant Koyama’s heroic dedication to
his duty. If the indications are correct, Koyama was already dead by the time the
third attack wave struck the vessel.
The American bombers dove at around 1500. Mogami and Arashio did not
have a chance to move too far from Mikuma before the enemy was upon them,
the ocean churning into froth around all three ships from exploding bombs and
bullets. The Americans pressed their attack with the same ferocity as before, but
not so accurately. Even so, both cruisers were hit again, and one of the
destroyers as well.
Destroyer Arashio took a bomb hit near her No. 3 turret aft. Tragically, it
exploded among the massed survivors of Mikuma, who had just been pulled
from the water. Thirty-seven men were killed outright, and the commander of
DesDiv 8, Cdr. Ogawa Nobuki, was wounded.59 This same hit started a fire and
knocked out Arashio’s steering. Fortunately for the destroyer, no further damage
was forthcoming, and the fire was soon extinguished. Though forced to resort to
manual steering, Arashio was subsequently able to escape, following Mogami
and Asashio west. Her sister Asashio had not been struck directly, but had lost
twenty-two men to strafing.
Mogami took a bomb on the seaplane deck, which started a horrendous fire
near the ship’s sick bay.60 All the doctors and orderlies were either killed
outright or wounded, leaving the wounded men unable to save themselves as the
fires roared in. Worse yet, this was at least the third hit near the aircraft deck in
the same day and the bulkheads had been badly warped by the blasts. As a result,
many of the escape hatches in the vicinity had been damaged. The conflagration
was spreading, and Lieutenant Commander Saruwatari once again made the
tough call of taking the “apparently unmerciful step” and ordering the entire
compartment sealed off by closing all the undamaged hatches around it.61
This wrenching decision gave damage control the crucial edge they needed.
At length, the raging fire was checked and gradually brought under control.
Saruwatari later recalled that when the compartments were reopened, it was
found that several men had indeed been trapped and perished there. Their bodies
were found contorted in their last throes next to the dogged hatches. One
sublieutenant had clearly committed hara-kiri to end his life before the fires
burned him alive. Saruwatari “trembled with great sorrow” to see the bodies of
his shipmates thus, but Mogami’s damage-control officer had once again made
the critical decision that saved his ship.
Fortunately, despite the bomb hit and fire, Mogami’s engines remained
operable. After a series of quick inquiries with the two destroyers, Captain Soji
took stock of the situation and decided his course of action. At 1500 Mogami
radioed the word of the third attack and reported that she, Mikuma, and Arashio
had sustained bomb hits.62 Mikuma was done for, and the same would hold true
for Mogami if she didn’t vacate the area immediately. More than three hours of
daylight remained, meaning that further attacks might be forthcoming. Thus,
with heavy hearts among the men, at 1525 Mogami set a course due west with
both destroyers, leaving Mikuma and her crew to their fates. Between them, the
three ships had only managed to pull her dying skipper and 239 other officers
and men on board.63
By some miracle, Mogami’s speed mounted steadily until she was making
around twenty knots. Given her damaged state, this was rather incredible, a fact
that was remarked on by Ugaki, who wryly noted, “At 1525 Mogami reported
that she was heading due west at 20 knots to lure the enemy toward our Main
Force. That Mogami with her bow damaged managed to put up such a high
speed … is partly because her damage control has progressed and also partly
because she made a desperate effort to get out of a trap.”64 Mogami would make
good her escape, rejoining Kond ’s Second Fleet the next day. Though her fire
amidships had been contained, it wasn’t totally extinguished until several hours
after sunset.65 Later, dockyard workers found “800 large or small holes in
portside,” the effect of which was to turn the ship’s flank into “something like a
honeycomb.” Surprisingly, Mogami’s casualties totaled only 9 officers and 81
petty officers and men killed, with another 101 wounded.66 She was fortunate
indeed to have survived at all, and at the top of the list of reasons why must
stand the courageous actions of her damage-control officer, Lieutenant
Commander Saruwatari.

Left behind by her consorts, Mikuma continued burning and slowly settling. She
lingered on for at least four hours or more, increasingly heeled over to port, but
not trimmed noticeably by either the bow or stern. No Japanese warship would
ever see her again, but her last hours would achieve graphic immortality, thanks
to the U.S. Navy. This latter fame came about because the American pilots
returning to TF 16 could not agree on what it was that they had attacked. Many
of the aviators were convinced Mikuma was a battleship, while others thought
she was a cruiser of some kind. There was even less agreement on Mogami’s
identity, and given her smashed bow, this is perhaps not surprising. Spruance
listened to these conflicting reports with growing impatience, for if his men had
missed the “battleship” previously reported, he wanted to know about it while
there was yet time for a final strike. Finally, at 1553 Enterprise launched two
SBDs to photo recon the targets and settle the argument.67 The Japanese ships
were by now little more than ninety miles away, but there wasn’t much time to
get the job done–dusk was approaching.

20-2: Mikuma after attacks, 6 June. Nos. 1 and 2 main turrets have been trained
hard abaft to port. No. 3 turret, blasted by a bomb hit, is skewed to starboard,
with its right barrel elevated. The roof of No. 2 turret has been blown off by an
internal explosion. The rear half of the stack has been destroyed, and the ship is
noticeably settling. Amidships, where the torpedoes have exploded, the ship’s
upper works have been completely destroyed, along with the mainmast. The ship
is still afi re throughout her superstructure area. (Naval Historical Center)

However, there was still plenty of light at 1715 when the pair of SBDs
arrived above the stricken Japanese cruiser. She was floating forlornly in the
hauntingly beautiful glow of the coming sunset. They marked Mikuma’s position
as 29°-28’N, 173°-11’E. The planes circled slowly at about 100 feet as the
camera shutters snapped, freezing Mikuma in all her dreadful agony. Though
Mogami was now long gone, the photo planes did see her far on the western
horizon, in position 29°-24’N, 172°-20’E on a westerly course. They also noted
two destroyers with her, apparently trying to screen the damaged cruiser with
smoke.68

20-3: Mikuma after attacks, 6 June. One of the most famous photographs of the
war, the magnitude of the destruction on board can clearly be seen. Both portside
torpedo tube mounts have been trained outboard, either by the explosions
themselves or more likely during a last-ditch attempt to jettison the torpedoes.
Her aircraft deck is a smoldering ruin. The wreckage atop No. 4 eight-inch
turret, erroneously labeled in many accounts as the remains of Captain Fleming’s
dive-bomber, is, in fact, most likely debris from either the aft superstructure or
perhaps the mainmast itself. Human touches can also be seen. A sailor is visible
astern climbing down a rope ladder, with others in a small raft by her stern. Aft,
men in white uniforms can be seen near the fantail. The heads of swimmers in
the water are also visible. The knowledge that almost none of the men seen in
this evocative image survived their ordeal makes it all the more poignant. (Naval
Historical Center)

Shortly thereafter, the Americans left Mikuma to her fate. One of her few
survivors would later recall that it was about dusk when her list to port began to
increase more rapidly. Finally, with a great billow of smoke and steam, she
turned onto her port side and sank, the first Japanese cruiser to be lost in the
war.69 The approximate time and position was 1930 at 29°-28’N, 173°-11’E.70
Partly because of the ferocity of the fires and explosion, but mostly because of
the curtailment of the rescue operation, the loss of life upon Mikuma’s sinking
was extremely heavy. A full 700 officers and men of her nominal crew of 888
perished.71 Included among them was her captain. As if his spirit was seeking to
hasten to rejoin his fallen warriors, Captain Sakiyama Shakao would later
succumb to his wounds and die on board Suzuya on 13 June.72

20-4: Mikuma after attacks, 6 June. Although blurry, this shot shows the
immense devastation wrought on Mikuma’s superstructure, midships, and
funnel. Also apparent is the hull damage suffered from her ramming by
Mogami–her hull plates are heavily dished in just forward of No. 2 five-inch
antiaircraft mount, near the bridge. (Naval Historical Center)

Further west, Captain Soji, on board Mogami, did make one last attempt to
avert the loss of life he knew would accrue from Mikuma’s sinking. After sunset,
he ordered Asashio to return and “make every effort to rescue Mikuma’s
survivors and later rejoin us.” Asashio apparently did so, but found nothing in
the darkness apart from dark waters covered with even darker oil. According to
her log, “not even one survivor could be rescued.”73
Yet two men ultimately escaped the fate of their ship and were eventually
rescued by the submarine Trout on 9 June. One was chief radioman Yoshida
Katsuichi; the other was a third-class fireman named Ishikawa Kenichi. When
rescued, Yoshida was suffering from crushed ribs and required hospitalization,
and could provide few details of Mikumd’s final hours.74 Ishikawa, however,
was only twenty-one years old and in good health. After Mikuma went down, he
and Yoshida found themselves with seventeen other sailors on a raft. They
drifted through that night and all the next day. One by one, all but these two had
succumbed to their wounds or the lack of food and water.
The Japanese did not know it, but by the evening of the 6th, the Battle of
Midway was all but over from the victor’s point of view. Admiral Spruance had
decided he had pushed his luck far enough. His carrier forces had now reached a
point over 400 miles west of Midway. The risk of submarines and air attack was
growing with each mile. He was also determined not to be drawn into range of
Wake Island’s bombers, nor to blunder into Yamamoto’s powerful surface guns–
both of which aims the Japanese were energetically trying to bring about. More
concretely, the majority of his destroyers were getting critically low on fuel.
Accordingly, he gave the order at 1907 for TF 16 to reverse course, suspend any
further chase, and head for Pearl.75 All that remained for the Americans now was
to continue their anxious search for survivors on the vast ocean. The Japanese,
however, were as yet unaware of their opponent’s decision to withdraw, and for
them it would take one more day for the curtain to fall.

Dusk on the 6th on board Yamato found Yamamoto and his staff in a state of
growing unease. From where they sat, the American carrier fleet appeared to be
in pursuit, and there was now a concern that the Invasion Force itself might soon
be endangered. Preliminary estimates had concluded that the American force
harrying the Mikuma group contained one or two carriers with accompanying
cruisers. But this was only part of the enemy force, at least when the available
intelligence was collated. The Japanese now believed that no less than five or six
(!) American carriers had been concentrated in the Midway area during the
battle, out of which “only two [had] been destroyed so far.” The Japanese
considered it reasonable to assume that even counting their battle losses, the
enemy “still [had] three or four carriers, including converted ones on hand.” Of
these, it was further assumed that “at least one regular carrier, two converted
carriers, several destroyers and cruisers” were in immediate pursuit of the
Japanese forces.76 It was guessed that these American carriers would first finish
off Mogami and the two DesDiv 8 destroyers. Then after temporarily
withdrawing east, it was expected that they would turn again and attack the
Invasion Force on the morning of the 7th.
This would never do. Accordingly, at 1550 Yamamoto decided he would
take the Main Body south after Kond to guard against this worst-case
scenario.77 Simultaneously, he hoped to lure the enemy carriers within range of
Wake Island’s bombers. With any luck, a close night engagement could be
forced in this way, too. The alternative was to risk waiting until the morning of 7
June, braving a hail of enemy air attacks, and then hoping to charge into the
enemy’s midst. If all the available planes from Zuih and H sh could somehow
destroy the enemy’s flight decks, the Main Body might make it into gun range.
 Doing so, however, would require rescheduling the fleet’s appointed
refueling rendezvous a second time.78 This had originally been scheduled for
morning of the 6th but had been moved back twenty-four hours to the morning
of the 7th. Now it was shifted again and the tankers told to proceed to a different
locale by the next afternoon, with fueling most likely to occur on the 8th.79 It
was likewise decided to shift the tanker train further south, as Ugaki feared that
while Kond was rushing south through fog at twenty knots, he was “not paying
attention to anything other than rescuing the second half of the Seventh Cruiser
Division.”80 In other words, in his zest to rescue Mogami, Kond might well run
out of fuel.
In fact, Kond ’s wasn’t the only formation in such danger. Yamamoto’s
own destroyers were running low as well, making the refueling of DesRon 3 and
DesRon 10 absolutely essential. The only way to do so was from the fleet’s
battleships, and shortly after 1700 the Main Body swung around to course 040
and began refueling its escorts. During the same period, the opportunity was
taken to shift more of Kid Butai’s survivors from the crowded destroyers to
Nagato and Mutsu. Finally, after each destroyer had taken on an average of 150
tons of fuel, refueling was suspended at 2330.81 Fifteen minutes after midnight,
Yamato came about and resumed her dash southward at eighteen knots.
In these early morning hours of 7 June, Yamamoto tried to grab whatever
rest he could. But it was difficult, for he was suffering from an acute
stomachache (later discovered to be an infestation of roundworms).82 Under the
circumstances, the chief’s condition concerned Ugaki and his staff almost as
much as the possibility of contact with the enemy. There was one bit of good
news, though. From the north came word that Hosogaya’s Aleutians Force had
made a successful surprise landing on Kiska Island at 0120. Not long after, word
came that Attu Island had been taken as well.83 A long, uncertain night followed,
with nerves taut and tensions high, as Kond ’s force might report engaging the
enemy at any moment.
However, the morning brought neither enemy attacks, nor even snooping
planes. At length, Kond reported that he had sent out search aircraft far and
wide, but had found only empty sea. Even longer-ranged searches from Wake
Island came back with the same negative answer. It gradually dawned on the
Japanese that the U.S. carrier force had withdrawn from the scene. Ugaki
remarked at this point that “We had no choice but to give up our intention of
launching an all-out counterattack with the whole Combined Fleet.”84
These words signaled the abolition of the final Japanese hopes of somehow
reversing the verdict of what more than one called “The Tragic Battle.”
Spruance’s prudence had paid off. For the Japanese, it meant that saving
Mogami and DesDiv 8 “despite their being considered doomed for a while,”85
was the only apparent consolation prize of the battle, along with securing two
miserable, mist-shrouded islands in the Aleutians.
Unbeknownst to Yamamoto, though, the dawn of the 7th brought the final,
and clearly the most important, Japanese accomplishment of this otherwise
disastrous campaign. At 0501 Yorktown finally sank. It had been apparent during
the dawn hours that her end was near. Finally, at 0443 she had turned completely
onto her port beam ends, revealing the deep wounds left by Tanabe’s strike. For
some time she just lay there, like an exhausted, harpooned whale. Then the stern
began to lower, until at last gallant Yorktown lifted her bow ever so slightly and
slid stern first beneath the waves, descending gracefully three miles to the
seabed, carrying 57 dead with her.86 There she would lie in sepulchral darkness
for nearly fifty-six years, until rediscovered in 1998 by an undersea expedition
led by Dr. Robert Ballard.
Even now, with the end of the battle clearly in sight, certain loose ends
vexed the harried and tired Combined Fleet staff. Since Tanikaze’s run back
toward Hiry had been interrupted, the carrier’s final fate remained unclear. It
was felt that if she had actually been boarded by the enemy, then they would
have intercepted some indication of this in the American’s radio traffic.87
However, submarines dispatched to confirm her sinking found nothing.
As a final, and as it developed, futile ruse, the heavy cruisers Myoko and
Haguro, one destroyer division, and a tanker were ordered on the evening of the
7th to try and lure the enemy westward with false messages.88 This effort, like
all the others before them, came to nothing, though they kept at it till 13 June.89
However, with sunset and the descent of darkness on the 7th, at long last it
was time for most of Combined Fleet to begin its weary, disconsolate voyage
back to the Inland Sea. Apart from some designated reinforcements to the
Aleutians covering forces, the rest of the fleet was now going home. Yet, as the
fleet’s course was adjusted at midnight, there came a final ignominy. During the
turn to starboard, destroyer Isonami slammed her starboard bow into destroyer
Uranami’s port side amidships. Uranami received damage to her funnel uptakes,
cutting her speed to twenty-four knots, but Isonami got the worst of the
encounter. A meter of her bow was chopped off, and she could consequently
make only eleven knots.90 Once again, a collision had dangerously cut the speed
of two vessels. Though the fate of Mikuma and Mogami was still fresh in
everyone’s mind, DesRon 3’s flagship, the light cruiser Sendai, stayed behind
with her wounded charges. But by now the enemy was far behind, and Sendai
would shepherd her little ones home without incident. The accident only
stretched already-worn nerves, and now even the fiery Ugaki was truly ready to
be quit of the whole debacle. Yamamoto had long since decided likewise. The
Battle of Midway was over.
21

A Bitter Homecoming

Emperor Hirohito had not learned of how the Battle of Midway was going
till nearly the end of the day on 5 June, Tokyo time, when an official of the
Naval General Staff found the courage to inform the emperor of the disaster then
unfolding. Stunned into silence, Hirohito had withdrawn and had held audiences
only with Naval Staff officers, after which he largely kept his own counsel on
the matter. Even Lord Privy Seal Kido Koichi, one of the most-trusted members
of Hirohito’s inner circle, was not informed of the disaster until 8 June. Kido’s
diary of that fateful meeting shows that Hirohito chose to put a brave face on the
matter, despite Kido’s assumption that the news of the Navy’s losses would
cause him “untold anguish.” However, the emperor’s countenance “showed no
trace of change.”1 Hirohito went on to declare that though the loss was
regrettable, the Navy should “not lose its fighting spirit.” He told Kido that he
had ordered Admiral Nagano “to ensure that future operations continue [to be]
bold and aggressive.” For his part, Kido was suitably moved: “I was very much
impressed by the courage displayed by His Majesty today and I was thankful
that our country is blessed with such a good sovereign.” There is some question,
though, whether or not the cloistered emperor truly understood the full import of
the calamity.
What is clear, however, is that Hirohito assumed an active role in covering
up the matter. On 10 June, at a joint command liaison meeting, the Navy made a
presentation on the battle that concealed the true magnitude of the losses from
the Army representatives present.2 Thus, the Army was left in the dark for some
time afterward regarding the Navy’s ability to carry out further operations.
Moreover, Hirohito took steps to ensure that news of the disaster was tightly
controlled, both within the military and Japanese society. Outside of the emperor
and top members of court, almost no civilian in Japan knew what had happened.
Even the knowledge disseminated among the ranks of the military was carefully
controlled. On 9 June, Hirohito designated General Ando Kisaburo, a devotee of
T j , to serve as minister without portfolio in coordinating this task.3
It was a shattered, somber fleet that reentered Hashirajima on the afternoon of 14
June. The final run in toward Japan had been tense, jittery, and full of submarine
alerts. Dense fog hung over the Inland Sea; so much so that the Main Body had
had to be guided through the narrow Bungo Suido by aircraft sent out from the
Saeki Naval Air Group. Yamato dropped anchor at 1900.4 As she did so, she was
met by a launch from Nagara, which had made port the day before. Though he
had been asked to report on the 15th, with a commendable sense of duty Admiral
Nagumo chose to face Yamamoto without delay.5 The following morning,
Nagara drew near battleship Kirishima.6 A file of boats then ferried the
exhausted and frustrated officers of First Air Fleet over to her, as she had been
designated the temporary headquarters of the Mobile Fleet.
Once on board, Lt. Cdr. Yoshioka Chuichi, First Air Fleet’s assistant staff
air officer and Commander Genda’s right-hand man, began working on
completing Nagumo’s official report. It was already overdue, and Yoshioka had
significant obstacles to surmount in compiling it. Not only did the excessive
secrecy interfere with his fact checking, but only two major sources of
documentation had been rescued from the destroyed ships: Akagi’s logbook, and
the detailed action reports of the four carrier air groups. From these, Yoshioka
was charged with compiling a chronicle of the action. Given the lack of available
materials from the carriers, he was understandably obliged to fall back on the
reports of BatDiv 3, CruDiv 8, and DesRon 10. He interviewed Nagumo and
appended the admiral’s written battle summary. Despite time pressures,
Yoshioka ultimately completed his task with commendable skill. The result was
the famous “Nagumo Report,” which described the actions of First Air Fleet
from 27 May to 9 June 1942.7 The report is dated 15 June 1942, although reports
were filtering in as late as 21 June.
While Yoshioka and First Air Fleet staff were thus cloistered, the rest of the
fleet was recuperating, reprovisioning, and caring for the wounded. Sadly, for
many of the men, making it back to port was only the beginning of their ordeal,
rather than the end. On 11 June Hirohito issued a directive to the Naval General
Staff that might have caused many of the sailors to doubt His Majesty’s
benevolence, namely, that the Midway wounded were to return to Japan under
tight security and be forbidden contacts, “until they could be healed, heartened,
hushed, and reassigned.”8
This policy was put into effect as soon as the fleet reached Hashirajima.
The wounded were transferred to the hospital ships Hikawa Maru and Takasago
Maru, which in turn transported 280 and 338 cases, respectively, to naval
hospitals at Kure, Sasebo, and Yokosuka.9 Many of the men were classified as
“secret patients” and quarantined in special wards, cut off from both other sailors
and family alike, in order that no word escaped regarding Kid Butai’s
destruction. Both Fuchida and maintenance man Arimura suffered these
indignities, as did S ry s badly burned executive officer, Cdr. Ohara Hisashi.
Only specially cleared nurses and doctors were allowed into the wards, and there
were fewer of those than need wanted. No communications in or out, not even
letters from home, were permitted. Some of the men weren’t allowed to leave for
a year or more and were shamed by the medical staffs at having been defeated.10
Those left uninjured were also deemed second-class citizens. Many of the
surviving officers were dispersed to outlying commands. The bulk of the enlisted
men were designated as replacements for units in the South Pacific and were
sent there as expeditiously as possible. No home leaves were allowed. The
survivors thus were denied a final chance to say good-bye to family and loved
ones before being shipped to the southern theater, where many of them would
ultimately meet their deaths.11 Thus, the Imperial Navy compounded its own
errors by treating its own men shamefully.
Civilian cameraman Makishima Teiuchi, who had filmed the attacks on
both Akagi and Kaga, only to lose his priceless footage in the subsequent fire,
found himself in an internment camp of sorts for several weeks. Even when
released, he was warned not to go to Tokyo or he would be arrested by the
kempeitai, the dreaded military police.12 He, too, was shortly shipped back out to
the South Seas, far away from anyone to whom he could spill the beans.
To the Japanese public, the battle was portrayed as a great victory. On 11
June, for instance, the Japan Times and Advertiser trumpeted “Navy Scores
Another Epochal Victory!” and claimed two American carriers sunk.13 Within
days, another American heavy cruiser and submarine were added for good
measure. Japanese losses were left curiously vague, although an 11 June
broadcast with prominent civilian naval commentator Ito Masanori noted that
Japan had lost two carriers in return. Nevertheless, this was a small price to pay,
Ito said, considering the “brilliant war results” obtained off Midway, which were
“beyond all imagination.” The latter statement was certainly true, but not in the
way Ito intended.14
This marked a rather radical departure in the history of Japanese wartime
propaganda. Up until then, it had been customary to provide filtered views of the
fighting in China that avoided unpleasant details. However, the Japanese news
had not previously resorted to telling blatantly fabricated lies. Hirohito, though,
was pleased with the public’s response and the next day floated the idea of
issuing an Imperial Rescript to the commanders at Midway commemorating
Midway.15 Hirohito’s advisers, however, persuaded him otherwise, pointing out
that things were not so desperate as to lower His Majesty’s heretofore sacred
pronouncements to the level of propaganda.
From the Midway wounded, however, there was no way that the disaster
could be concealed entirely. Maeda Takeshi, recovering from his leg wound,
found out about the Navy’s cover-up when one of the nurses snuck a copy of
Asahi Shimbun, Japan’s leading daily newspaper, into his ward. There, large as
life, were the headlines that Maeda knew were all a “big lie.”16 To Maeda’s way
of thinking, if Japan had to resort to such outrageous deceits, it couldn’t win the
war.
On 10 June, the Navy Ministry had sent a message to its commands,
declaring, “it was decided to quote our damage in the Midway Sea Battle as one
carrier lost, one carrier heavily damaged, one cruiser heavily damaged, and 35
planes failing to return.”17 Officially, Ugaki announced on the 15th that, “except
for those made public by the General Staff, nothing should be revealed about
Midway and the Aleutian operation inside of as well as outside the Navy. In the
Navy it would be announced that Kaga was lost, while S ry and Mikuma were
seriously damaged, but their names would not be announced in public.”18 The
final policy on how the Battle of Midway was to be “understood” or reported,
even in official communications, was fixed and issued on 21 June. A bulletin by
the chief of staff for the Sixth Fleet spelled out the new orthodoxy:

As for the ships lost and heavily damaged [at Midway], the policy about
announcing is [that] secrecy will be maintained… and discretion manfully
exerted.
Kaga, S ry , and Mikuma will be taken off the ship’s register when
there is suitable opportunity.
Akagi and Hiry will remain on the ship’s register for the time being,
but will not be manned.
The transfer [reassignment] of crews will be ordered gradually.
Concerning those KIA, the personnel bureau and personnel section
will gradually notify the families of the deceased, but the name of the ship
sunk will not be mentioned. The policy is to handle the killed merely as
individuals.…
Concerning damages: Akagi and Hiry both caught fire and were
heavily damaged. Tanikaze, Isokaze, and Arashi: each slightly damaged.
Mogami, Isonami, and Uranami were hit. Mogami moderately damaged,
and others, slightly damaged.19
 Thus, the need for secrecy trumped all other considerations. This gives an
indication about how the aftermath of the battle was discussed, even into the
postwar years. In an immediate sense, the admission that Akagi and Hiry were
so heavily damaged as to be unmanned may have been just a face-saving move.
Reading between the lines, it still meant that all four carriers had been knocked
out. What is equally intriguing is the point-blank obfuscation regarding Akagi
and Hiry ’s scuttlings, despite literally thousands of witnesses. Similarly, one
wonders why there was a difference between the details of S ry and Kaga’s
fabricated fates and those of Akagi and Hiry . It suggests that the scuttling of S
ry and Kaga may even have been concealed from the Naval General Staff after
the battle. Given such an atmosphere, it is not surprising that many of the records
of the battle (ship’s logs, war diaries, etc.) were destroyed after the war.

No such indignities as were heaped on the Navy’s wounded were inflicted on

Combined Fleet’s leadership or staff, despite their bearing most of the immediate
responsibility for the catastrophe. In fact, to outward appearances, nothing
happened that would indicate a great battle had just been lost. No
announcements were made. No heads rolled, nor were there any major changes
made to staff appointments. Admiral Yamamoto was still in charge of Combined
Fleet. Admiral Nagumo was put back in charge of the new carrier force centered
on Sh kaku and Zuikaku.
To the Western observer, this all seems rather incredible. After all,
Yamamoto and Nagumo had just presided over a naval disaster rivaling Salamis
or Trafalgar. Without delving too deeply into the reasons and responsibility for
the disaster (we’ll deal with that shortly), the fact remains that in a Western
navy, a failure of this magnitude would most likely have resulted in the swift
punishment of any responsible parties. At the very least, careers would have
been ruined. Yet, Nagumo continued in his current role until October 1942, and
Yamamoto would remain head of Combined Fleet until his death in April 1943.
How did this occur?
The short answer is that even in the wake of his greatest defeat, Yamamoto
was still in a position of strength. First, at least in the eyes of the Japanese
public, which had been fed a steady diet of victory since the outbreak,
Yamamoto was the “genius” behind the Navy’s triumphs. Having just
proclaimed Japan’s most recent “victory,” cashiering a man who spent a
significant portion of his time answering adulatory fan mail from the nation’s
schoolchildren would raise ugly questions as to why he was being replaced.
Indeed, even in the dark days of late 1944, when any fool could tell that the
war wasn’t going well, Japan’s military never had the moral fortitude to admit
that it had lost so much as a single battle to date. With the Navy already in
cover-up mode after Midway, how could anyone, even within the Navy, come
out and say what needed to be said? This speaks volumes about the larger needs
of the Navy as an organization–that the assessment of responsibility (and the
ability to truly learn from the battle) was secondary to preserving internal
solidarity and organizational loyalty while maintaining outward appearances.20
It must be remembered that the defeat at Midway had an impact on
interservice relationships with the Army. The underlying tensions between the
two services remained fixed, and it is almost certain that the Navy would have
wanted to prevent the Army from making any hay as a result of the defeat.
Indeed, the Navy initially concealed the full extent of its losses even from T j ,
despite the fact that he was the head of the government.21 As such, it is perhaps
not surprising that the Navy was reluctant to undertake dramatic shake-ups in
Combined Fleet’s command structure.
The same motivation was true for Naval GHQ. Admitting failure at
Midway also meant admitting that the Navy’s strategy-making procedures had
been hijacked by a subordinate command. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s,
numerous incidents of such insubordination had occurred within both branches
of the services. The truth was that superior commanders within the Japanese
military hardly ever brought their subordinates to heel, and Admiral Nagano
wasn’t about to start with Yamamoto.

While the Japanese utterly failed to come to terms with their defeat at the level
of high command, the Navy itself did make adjustments. In the area of carrier
design and operation, for instance, the Japanese reacted in several ways. First
and foremost, a higher proportion of refueling and rearming activities were now
to be performed on the flight deck. It was recognized that the enclosed space of
the hangar, while better sheltered, also held the potential for disaster should a hit
be taken. Japan’s carrier designs also morphed to meet the perceived threat.
Carrier Taih , then building, would sport a heavily armored flight deck, as
would supercarrier Shinano–converted from the hull of a Yamato-class
battleship. Both of these carriers were intended to operate in the fore of any new
battle, serving as armored refueling points for the air groups of the more
vulnerable fleet carriers coming up behind. These latter vessels–the carriers of
the Unry class that would emerge in 1944–were almost carbon copies of the
basic Hiry design. Yet, they would incorporate important improvements. Each
had only two elevators, augmenting the strength of the flight deck (albeit at the
cost of slowing deck operations). Increased use of foam firefighting equipment
was incorporated, and the Navy also began to employ the American technique of
draining fuel lines when not in use. Portable damage-control equipment, such as
gas-powered pumps, would begin making its appearance later in the war as well.
Not surprisingly, the whole topic of damage-control procedures was
reappraised, particularly with respect to firefighting technique. Accordingly, new
courses for damage control were established.22 Specially selected enlisted men
from the ship construction and engineering branches were given one-week
courses at the Workshop and Repair School in the fundamentals of damage-
control technique.23 Likewise, all line officers were given at least some training,
amounting to about two weeks during wartime. However, the Navy was
churning out officers and enlisted men at a prodigious rate. Training for line
officers had fallen from three years to just eighteen months, and that of enlisted
men had dropped from six months to four. A few week’s worth of training was
hardly sufficient to transform raw recruits into seasoned practitioners, especially
when it appears that much of the training was less hands-on than simply
watching demonstrations in firefighting given by “the experts.”24 This was
compensated, to a degree, by regular exercises aboard ship.25 However, Sh
kaku’s, Hiy ’s, and Taih ’s subsequent losses because of faulty damage control,
particularly with regard to firefighting technique, leaves open the question as to
whether or not the Japanese actually made significant strides in these areas after
Midway.
Pilot training also had to be accelerated in the wake of such a serious
defeat, and the Japanese took steps in this direction as well. The numbers of
cadet pilots graduating had already increased in 1941, although they would not
swell dramatically until 1943. In this way, the Japanese managed somehow to
continue fielding air units throughout the theater.26 However, the way in which
the Japanese went about fulfilling their needs was far from optimal.27 Given
their numerical inferiority, it was inevitable that the length of training would
decline as the war went on. Yet the Japanese made no effort to ensure that the
training that was provided was of the best possible quality. This, in turn, was
linked directly to the uncaring attitude with which the Japanese military treated
its human capital. Unlike the United States, which rotated experienced aviators
home and then either promoted them to squadron commands or put them into
training billets, Japanese aviators were rarely furloughed. Often, this was simply
the result of vast difficulties encountered by Japan’s overworked merchant
marine in moving men and matériel around such an enormous battlefield. But
the common lament in the forward squadrons became Shinanakute wa kaeshite
moraenai–“They won’t let you go home unless you die.”28
The outcomes of Japan’s belated expansion of her pilot training program
were twofold. First, the vital knowledge and techniques of the veteran airmen
were not passed along in turn to the newer Japanese aviators being rushed into
service. As a result, these youngsters were fed raw into combat against
increasingly well-trained American pilots. The quality of Japanese air groups, as
a result, became increasingly uneven, with diminished cohesiveness in
comparison to the elite early-war squadrons. Often, too, these replacement pilots
made crucial mistakes early in their combat careers that led to their simply being
killed off, when a similar error in training might have been caught and corrected
had more experienced instructors been present. Japan’s combat aircraft, which
lacked adequate protection for their pilots, only compounded this trend. Thus, by
the end of 1942, Allied intelligence had already noticed the beginnings of a
sharp decline in the effectiveness of Japanese air units.
This was negatively reinforced by the second major outcome of Japan’s
misguided pilot rotation policy–the deterioration of the veteran aviators
themselves. Caught in the horrendous physical conditions of the South Pacific,
where heat, humidity, disease, and poor food and water were the norm, and
subjected to the unremitting strain of combat, many of the early-war veterans
inevitably fell apart physically and emotionally. Despite their fearsome early-
war reputations, Japanese aviators weren’t supermen, and no one could
reasonably be expected to continue functioning under such conditions
indefinitely. As a result, even men with hundreds of hours of combat under their
belts became increasingly sloppy and uncaring. In a military that already took
the word “fatalism” to new extremes, the results were inevitably much higher
casualties among senior aviators than real need demanded. As 1943 opened,
therefore, airmen from the prewar cadres were more and more difficult to find–
they had almost all been killed.
Intriguingly, one of the most immediate effects from the Battle of Midway
was a change to Japanese carrier doctrine. In this area, at least, the Japanese
made an honest effort to diagnose and correct what had gone wrong. In fact, this
process actually began before the fleet anchored at Hashirajima. At 0800 on 10
June,29 as the Main Body was still steaming back to Japan, Yamato had
requested Nagara to come alongside. One by one, the members of First Air Fleet
staff were winched over to the battleship via breeches buoy. They were then
shown below to meet with Yamamoto in the admiral’s cabin.
It was an emotional moment. Ugaki remarked later that Nagumo’s staff
were still in their heavy winter uniforms and looked “considerably exhausted”
by their ordeal.30 The atmosphere was uncomfortable. Kusaka, ashamed, started
the briefing by saying, “Admittedly, we are not in a position to come back alive
after having made such a blunder, but we have come back only to pay off the
scores some day.” He had concluded by asking Yamamoto to give them another
chance. Yamamoto, obviously deeply moved, replied that he would.
Kusaka had then proceeded to report on the reasons for the disaster. Among
other things, he noted that the searches on the flanks of the Carrier Force were
not sufficient and opined that it would have been better to have launched some
aircraft earlier in the morning, before daylight, with others launched closer to
dawn. Here, indeed, was the genesis for the more sophisticated two-phased
searches that would later be formalized within the Imperial Navy’s scouting
doctrine. Kusaka, rather presciently, also anticipated the need for functionalizing
the carrier divisions within a task force, including using one group for attacking,
and another for maintaining the readiness of a reserve force. He further
advocated the usage of a dedicated carrier for interceptors. Crucially, Kusaka
also acknowledged that there were situations when speed of reaction was more
important than an escorted strike.31 It’s clear that a number of these elements
were carried forward into Combined Fleet’s reassessment of its doctrine.
This process continued rapidly after the fleet made port in Kure. The first,
most visible change was the disbanding of First Air Fleet, which was renamed
Third Fleet. The Fifth Carrier Division (Sh kaku and Zuikaku) was officially
recognized as the core of this new carrier force and was renumbered the First
Carrier Division. CarDiv 4 Juny , Hiy , and Ry j ) was renumbered CarDiv 2.
Battleships Hiei and Kirishima (now designated the 11th Battleship Division)
were attached directly to Third Fleet, thereby formally removing them from the
battle line and First Fleet. Likewise, the two operational survivors of CruDiv 7
(Kumano and Suzaya), and the veterans of CruDiv 8 (Tone and Chikuma) were
directly attached to Third Fleet as well.32
Third Fleet’s core unit was to remain the carrier division, but it would be a
three-ship unit composed of two heavy and one light carriers. The light carrier
was charged with fleet defense and would carry primarily fighters. The heavy
carriers would retain a mixed air wing, but the mixture of aircraft was adjusted.
Fewer torpedo aircraft were to be carried, in preference for more fighters and
dive-bombers. Sh kaku and Zuikaku’s fighter and dive-bomber complements
were increased from twenty-one to twenty-seven apiece, while the torpedo
planes were reduced from twenty-one to eighteen. The roles of the aircraft were
modified as well, with faster, more agile dive-bombers designated as the main
attack weapon for holing flight decks and rendering the enemy carriers
inoperative. Torpedo planes would then be used to attack and sink damaged
carriers.33
 The battle plan for the carrier fleet was changed drastically as well. Much
like the agonizing reappraisal that the U.S. Navy had undergone in the aftermath
of Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Navy now grappled with the doctrinal
consequences of its own calamity. Combined Fleet for the first time now
explicitly recognized that the aircraft carrier was “the center, the main objective,
of the Decisive Air Battle; surface forces will cooperate with them.”34 The battle
squadrons of the Navy were subordinated to the purposes of the carriers–a
radical shift in attitude. Given its earlier triumphs, of course, it is ironic that the
Imperial Navy had taken six months longer than its opponent to come to this
conclusion. But from now on, battleships and other screening units were to be
directly incorporated in the carrier fleet, and would steam with them to the
anticipated scene of battle.35 Direct visual contact would be maintained with all
units, so that the force as a whole could operate under conditions of strict radio
silence. The carrier fleet would also rely more heavily on the reconnaissance
assets of other vessels and land-based air groups.
However, upon reaching the battle area, the screening forces were to be
split off. A novel formation was worked out that was designed to provide the
maximal amount of warning time to the carriers of incoming enemy air attacks,
even at the expense of the fleet’s battleships. The carrier division was to be
preceded by a scouting line of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers that would be
placed anywhere from 100 to 200 nautical miles in front of the carriers. These
vessels were to be arranged in line abreast, spaced apart roughly at the limits of
visual range. In addition to giving earlier warning of enemy aircraft, the scouting
line also placed the eyes of the fleet (the cruiser and battleship scout planes) in
the van, where they could find the enemy more easily. In addition, it was felt that
a widely distributed van formation would aid search aircraft attempting to return
to the fleet when all ships were operating under conditions of radio silence. A
friendly plane had a good chance of running across at least one of the vessels in
the van, which could in turn direct it to its mother ship. Finally, the heavy units
in the van itself could be used to attack enemy units with gunfire that had
already been damaged by dive-bomber attacks, thus augmenting the ship-killing
power of the fleet as a whole.36
The proposed formation was not without its share of critics. It was
recognized that the ships in the van were likely to absorb damage for the
carriers. While this was not an “official” function of the van, it was apparent
enough to the officers who would command the vessels located there, eliciting
criticism that they were “nothing but sacrifices for the carriers.”37 Furthermore,
it was felt by some that the detachment of the van units left the carriers less well
screened than they ought to have been. Conversely, the lack of screening units
might be compensated for by a lessened chance of being attacked in the first
place. Given that the carriers were almost solely responsible for providing their
own flak in any case, this rationalization may not have been as far-fetched as it
appears. It was also hoped that the installation of radar would aid the fleet’s air
defenses still further.38 However, the very shape of the screening dispositions
betrayed a lack of understanding of radar’s potential in antiair warfare.39
As it happened, these new plans had just been agreed upon in principle by
Third Fleet’s staff when the campaign at Guadalcanal burst forth unexpectedly.
News had come in on Friday, 7 August, that the islands of Tulagi and
Guadalcanal had been heavily attacked and that American carriers were
operating off the islands. Sh kaku, Zuikaku, and Ry j all sortied for Truk, with
the intent of battling the Americans immediately thereafter. Third Fleet staff’s
plans were so new that their doctrinal concepts hadn’t been distributed to
Admiral Nagumo’s ships before they left. It was hoped that the fleet’s staff
would have time to go over them at Truk. However, as events transpired, CarDiv
1 didn’t even call at Truk before heading to what would later be called the Battle
of the Eastern Solomons. To get the plans to Nagumo, a naval aircraft flew them
out to the carriers and delivered them by hand. No time was available for any
training exercises. As a result, Third Fleet’s new doctrine had little impact on the
battle itself.
The tale of Third Fleet’s doctrinal developments is a fitting place to end our
narrative, because it is a parable for how the Imperial Navy would fight the
remainder of the Pacific war–a day late, and a dollar short. Third Fleet’s efforts
at self-appraisal were honest, and their resulting doctrine contained some useful
elements. If nothing else, the Navy’s new battle plan finally placed the aircraft
carrier at the apex of its naval hierarchy and sought meaningful ways for the
fleet’s heavy units to contribute to the success of the carriers, rather than the
other way around. But these efforts were completely eclipsed by the speed with
which the Americans had gone over from the defense to the offense. Their
ability to launch a counteroffensive in a theater of operations as far flung as the
Solomon Islands was truly stunning and caught the Japanese completely by
surprise. From now on, it was the Americans who would hold the initiative. The
Japanese would still win tactical victories, but for all their efforts they would
never be able to reassert any meaningful influence over the flow of strategic
events. In the end, Third Fleet’s efforts would not be remembered as being a key
element in the resurrection of Japan’s carrier force. Rather, it would be nothing
more than a footnote in the coming tale of the total ruination of the Japanese
Navy.
 PART III

Reckonings

22

Why Did Japan Lose?

Even sixty years on, correctly identifying the reasons for Japan’s defeat at
Midway is not a simple task, because the battle defies simple answers. Indeed,
the scale and complexity of the struggle result in a host of possible reasons for
the catastrophe. Unfortunately, many of these reasons turn out to be proximate,
rather than root causes. Yet, if any lessons are to be gained from history, the true
sources of failure must be uncovered. It is to a careful consideration of these
issues that we now turn.
This quest will necessarily set aside the more prominent reasons on the
American side for their having won the battle. Code breaking, of course, stands
at the top of the list, and Admiral Chester Nimitz’s bold leadership, as well as
strong performances by Admirals Frank Jack Fletcher and Raymond Spruance
played important roles. Finally, the individual skill and bravery of the American
sailors, airmen, and Marines involved in many cases provided the difference
between victory and defeat. But all of these were factors beyond Japan’s control.
And it is safe to say that even despite these virtues, the Americans could not
have won the battle without the unwitting assistance of their foes. Given the
disparity in the naval forces then available in the Pacific, Midway was truly the
Imperial Navy’s to lose. Why did they do so?
An appropriate place to begin the search is with the contemporary Japanese
perspectives on the matter. Before Admiral Kusaka ever set foot on board
Yamato on 10 June, he had clearly been doing a great deal of thinking on the
reasons for the defeat. Inevitably, given his proximity to the battle and his
ignorance of American code–breaking activities, some of his conclusions were
valid, some less so. In Kusaka’s opinion, the Nagumo Force’s fogbound radio
transmission on the 2nd might well have led to their detection. Kusaka also
noted that the aerial searches on the eastern flank of the force were not
commenced early enough and should perhaps have been launched before dawn.
The fact that all four of Nagumo’s carriers were slated to carry out attacks on
Midway, as well as holding forces in reserve, Kusaka felt, led to confusion when
the initial sightings of American carriers were reported.1 He also bemoaned the
lack of fighters for the second attack wave (although we know in retrospect that
this is questionable), and that concentrating the force’s carriers meant they were
caught in a group.2
Admiral Ugaki, in his own personal diary, endorsed some aspects of
Kusaka’s analysis, such as the disadvantages associated with tactical
concentration of the force’s carriers. He noted, too, the lack of adequate
reconnaissance. However, Ugaki was less concerned with Nagumo’s scouting at
the tactical level than he was with the failure of Operation K (which left the
departure of the American carriers from Pearl Harbor undetected) and the fact
that the heightened state of alert on Midway itself had not been adequately
understood. He noted that the sheer size of the operation, and the distribution of
the forces, was such that Nagumo could not be rapidly reinforced when needed.
Ugaki also rightly harbored doubts concerning the security of Japanese plans.
Whether the Americans had detected Japanese forces as they sortied from bases
like Saipan, or the Northern forces had been sighted by a Russian merchant ship,
or Japanese radio security had simply been inadequate, Ugaki did not know, but
his “suspicion about these questions [was] not lacking.”3 Finally, Ugaki
conceded that the main cause for the defeat might have been “that we had
become conceited because of past success” and thereby failed to anticipate the
steps that might need to be taken if an “enemy air force should appear on
[Nagumo’s] flank.”4 As we shall see, the Imperial Navy’s hubris before the
battle is a theme that has resonated with historians down to the present day, and
for good reason.
Fuchida Mitsuo, writing shortly after the war, expanded on the theme of
overconfidence, ascribing it to what he referred to as “Victory Disease” (sh riby
)–a fatal conceit and sloppiness born of contempt for the enemy. Beyond such
moral failings, Fuchida also expounded a litany of faults in other aspects of the
operation, including a lack of strategic intelligence on American actions and
faulty scouting arrangements both before and on the day of the battle.5 To these
were added the dispersion of Japanese forces, caused by a failure to maintain
focus on the primary objective of the operation–the destruction of the enemy
fleet. Instead of keeping this goal “unequivocally fixed as the foremost aim of
the operation,” Combined Fleet allowed its plans to be driven by an “undue
emphasis on securing the best possible meteorological conditions for the
Midway landing operations.”6 Fuchida also commented on the technological
backwardness of the Imperial Navy (as manifested by its lack of radar) and its
continuing reliance on the battleship as the arm of decision.7
 At the level of command, Fuchida also rightly contended that Admiral
Yamamoto’s insistence on directing the operation from on board Yamato had
hampered his control of the battle. Admiral Nagumo, in turn, was faulted for
failing to “enforce adequate search dispositions on the morning of the Midway
strike.”8 More questionably, though, Fuchida cited the admiral for failing to use
a two-phase search, as well as failing to dispatch a replacement for Tone’s No. 4
plane instantly when it became apparent that its launch would be delayed. In
this, Fuchida overlooked the fact that two–phase search techniques had yet to be
incorporated into doctrine. Likewise, he ignored the fact that even had Tone’s
sole remaining long-range search aircraft been ready, the time required to get it
on the catapult, warmed up, and into the air would hardly have been less than it
actually took to launch Amari. The same criticism, of course, applies to any
notion of replacing the cruiser scout with an additional Type 97 from either
Akagi or Kaga.
Thus, the Japanese were fairly perceptive in identifying many of the
proximate causes of the defeat, though obviously both Ugaki and Fuchida were
totally unaware of the code-breaking activities that had played such a critical
part in the American victory. Fuchida had also identified perhaps the strongest
recurring emotional theme of the battle–the conceit of the Japanese. Not
surprisingly, though, neither Ugaki nor Fuchida was able or willing to take their
analysis further to look at organizational failings within the Navy. Admiral
Ugaki did apparently offer Kusaka and First Air Fleet staff apologies on behalf
of Combined Fleet headquarters for its faults in the battle.9 However, this was
little more than a polite nothing that reflected no real contrition or reflection on
his part. Instead, the sense that one gets from Ugaki’s diary is that things were
very much business as usual in Combined Fleet after the defeat. There were no
wrenching reassessments regarding how strategic command was exercised
within the Navy.
Turning to the Americans, and their perceived reasons for Japan’s defeat,
the very technical postwar study conducted at the U.S. Naval War College
rightly cited the overconfidence of Japanese forces.10 Likewise, Yamamoto’s
excessive reliance on the element of surprise in developing his plans was
carefully noted. In the war college’s opinion, though, a truly cardinal sin was
Yamamoto’s designing his plan around America’s perceived intentions rather
than their capabilities.11 In so doing, Yamamoto blinded himself to the
possibility that the Americans might actually wish to fight and might therefore
intentionally place themselves in a position to do so.
Other American commentators have mirrored this tendency to ascribe the
Japanese defeat to errors of analysis, while also picking up on the Victory
Disease theme. For instance, Gordon Prange, in his widely read Miracle at
Midway, mirrored Fuchida’s opinion that the Japanese had forgotten the
principle of the objective and had focused on capturing the island rather than on
destroying U.S. ships.12 Likewise, he echoed Fuchida’s opinion that
Yamamoto’s commanding the battle from on board Yamato had been a
mistake.13 Prange also correctly noted that Japan had lost the element of
surprise, had dispersed its forces over too great an area, and therefore lacked
superiority at the point of contact.14
More questionably, however, he criticized the Japanese for having failed to
carry on the fight even after Hiry ’s demise, asserting:

Yamamoto’s forces still far outnumbered and outweighed Fletcher’s in

surface units. Even in carriers, from his own, Kond ’s, and the Aleutian
Force he could have summoned one carrier and three light carriers, with a
total air strength of about fifty Zeros and sixty bombers. This was air power
not to be shrugged off, especially as the Japanese believed they had sunk
two out of three U.S. flattops. Instead, following the loss of Nagumo’s
carriers, Yamamoto … scurried homeward with his massive force like a
lumbering Saint Bernard … pursued by a scrappy terrier.15

This is folly, of course, as his analysis totally discounts the primary role of
airpower in the battle, as well as the fatally dispersed nature of the air assets left
to the Japanese, none of which were true fleet carriers. It likewise fails to
acknowledge Nagumo’s aggressiveness in the afternoon of the 4th, or
Yamamoto’s unsuccessful attempts to lure Spruance’s forces into another
engagement on the 6th and 7th. Prange concluded his analysis with a rather
strange admonition of Nagumo for having made Tomonaga’s morning attack
against Midway purpose. Prange’s notion that the initial attack should have been
conducted on a scale more on par with Kakuta’s much smaller attack on Dutch
Harbor is clearly misguided, as it violates the cardinal military principle of using
the maximum practical force available so as to simultaneously increase the
enemy’s casualties, while minimizing one’s own.16
Walter Lord, author of the other seminal American account of the battle,
Incredible Victory, placed Tone No. 4’s delayed departure, as well as Nagumo’s
decision to rearm his aircraft for a second attack against Midway, at the top of
his list of failures for the battle. Without fully understanding the dynamics of
Japanese carrier operations, he understandably also blames Nagumo for not
having attacked the American carriers as soon as they were detected. Lord
correctly noted the rigidity of Japanese planning–in that the Americans were
expected to react in a scripted fashion–as well as the fatal dispersion of Japanese
forces.17 Not surprisingly, too, he also commented on the “dangerous contempt”
for the enemy, as manifested in Victory Disease.
As can be seen, the majority of the reasons uncovered by both Japanese and
American observers were proximate causes, with one exception–Victory
Disease. Thus, the first task requisite with the completion of this survey of the
reasons for defeat is to examine more closely this important recurring theme. It
is demonstrable, though, that Victory Disease was only one among a
considerable number of key factors in the defeat.
The term “Victory Disease” is commonly used to designate the casual,
overconfident mental attitude that took hold in the Japanese Navy after an
uninterrupted string of victories in the first six months of the conflict. The
resulting loss of operational sharpness, and the rash of sloppy mistakes that
followed, are held up by many as being a fundamental cause for the defeat. The
man who first popularized the phrase, Fuchida Mitsuo, noted that the chief
symptom of the disease was simple conceit. It was the Navy’s “arrogant
underestimation of the enemy,” as well as its “blithe assumption that [the
enemy] would be taken by surprise” that led to the catastrophe. Fuchida chalked
up the dispersal of forces under Yamamoto’s battle plan to similar arrogance.
Yet, in his opinion, the malady was more dire than many other observers noted.
Victory Disease, Fuchida asserted, was responsible not just for the defeat at
Midway, but was “the root cause of Japan’s defeat … in the entire war” as well.
Further, he felt that Victory Disease’s root causes lay not just in six months of
victories, but rather in the Japanese national character. Fuchida wrote that, “there
is an irrationality and impulsiveness about our people which results in actions
that are haphazard and often contradictory. A tradition of provincialism makes
us narrow–minded and dogmatic, reluctant to discard prejudices and slow to
adopt even necessary improvements if they require a new concept.” He
concluded that these weaknesses “rendered fruitless all the valiant deeds and
precious sacrifices of the men who fought [at Midway].”18
Other Japanese veterans have commented on this phenomenon as well. For
his part, Cdr. Chihaya Masatake acidly remarked that Midway was “the most
splendid defeat the Japanese Navy had scored in its history up to that date,”
though many defeats even “more splendid were yet to come.” In his opinion, the
cause of that defeat “was nothing to wonder about. We as good as planned for it.
If we had escaped that terrible disaster on that occasion, we should have met the
same fate somewhere else in the Pacific theater, perhaps in the course of 1942….
[It was] something preordained. Why? Because it was visited on the Japanese
navy to penalize its absurd self-conceit.”19
It must be admitted that the concept of Victory Disease has a certain appeal
to it. The Japanese were overconfident going into the battle. They were guilty of
ignoring the various warning signs that manifested themselves from the time of
Coral Sea onward. They did underestimate the resolve and the fighting abilities
of the Americans. Yet, to suggest that six months of easy victories, or even years
of hubris before the war, had proven fatally corrosive to the rational faculties of
Japanese commanders from Yamamoto on down seems too simplistic. After all,
humble militaries don’t typically win. Indeed, before Midway, self-confidence to
the point of arrogance was a crucial ingredient in Japan’s victories. Thus, while
the symptoms of this mental malady certainly played a significant part in the
outcome, Victory Disease alone does not explain the breadth or the enormity of
Japan’s defeat at Midway.20 It was an important factor, but only one of several.
Likewise, arbitrarily selecting a group of command decisions (and the
individuals to go with them) to blame for the defeat is also too simplistic. This
cuts against the grain of many military histories, since books on great battles
customarily end by pointing the finger of blame at somebody, to establish
responsibility for the defeat. This is not to say that there isn’t ample personal
blame to be apportioned regarding Midway–there is. Indeed, at a superficial
level, it would be fairly easy to pick out three crucial personal failures, a cursory
accounting of which (albeit with a slightly revisionist twist) might go something
as follows.
Personal failure number one was the inability of Chikuma’s No. 1 search
plane to detect the American carriers on search line No. 5 between about 0615
and 0630. This stands in contrast to the conventional wisdom, which holds that it
was Tone No. 4’s late launch, combined with Nagumo’s decision to rearm his
reserve aircraft with land attack weapons, that ultimately doomed the Japanese
forces. But a careful examination of the facts shows that Tone No. 4’s failings,
while serious, were also somewhat immaterial to the larger issue. Likewise,
Nagumo’s decision to rearm, while ultimately costing his force some amount of
time, was also immaterial to this same problem; namely, that by 0630 the
Japanese could no longer forestall the launch of the American aircraft that would
crush Kid Butai. Neither Tone No. 4’s late launch nor Nagumo’s rearmament
orders had any bearing on this fatal loss of initiative. And once lost, it is almost
certain that no admiral–not Nagumo, not Yamaguchi, perhaps not even Horatio
Nelson himself–would be able to get it back.
The issue of Chikuma No. 1’s oversight leads to the second critical failure–
Commander Genda’s search plan. The lack of a two-phase search–even if it had
been incorporated into Japanese doctrine at the time–had nothing to do with the
case. The basic problem was simply too few airplanes and too much ocean to
cover. Had more aircraft been aloft, and their search sectors been overlapping,
Chikuma No. 1’s failure might not have been irretrievable. As it was, the
breaking of a single link of the reconnaissance plan led to the complete
unraveling of the plan as a whole.21
The final failure, of course, lies in Admiral Yamamoto’s battle plan. There
is no question that his operational scheme featured an overly rigid timetable and
a counterproductive dispersal of forces. By making the assumption that the
Americans were beaten, and therefore had to be baited into fighting, Yamamoto
made the crucial mistake of letting perceived intentions on the part of the
Americans drive his force structure and dispositions.22 The plan that emerged
from this flawed belief was a crazy quilt of formations and objectives, none of
which were mutually supporting. When one of the legs of the table was kicked
out, the entire article promptly collapsed under the weight of its own foolishness.
The result was a catastrophe worthy of Xerxes at Salamis, or Czar Alexander I at
Austerlitz.
However, while assigning blame to particular individuals may be
emotionally satisfying, in many cases it only identifies proximate causes and
fails to probe the roots of the defeat. Why was Genda’s search plan so scanty?
Why was Yamamoto’s battle plan flawed? Would a different air officer have
created a better search plan for Kid Butai? And by the same token, would
another Japanese admiral have created a sounder operational plan for Combined
Fleet? As will be seen, the answer to both of these questions is “Probably not.”
Or at least not in early 1942. Why is that? To resolve these issues, a closer
examination of the whole nature of failure within military institutions is
required, as well as a deeper understanding of the Imperial Navy’s culture.
To this end, important insights can be gleaned from the cogent study by
Eliot Cohen and John Gooch entitled Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of
Failure in War, which lays out a useful framework for analyzing why militaries
fail in battle.23 As Military Misfortunes points out, there has been a natural
tendency on the part of both the public and historians to assign blame mostly to
individuals, “criminalizing” military failure by indicting one or more
commanders. While such an approach is superficially appealing, it often ignores
deeper layers of organizational failure. Cohen and Gooch make an important
point, since modern military commanders rarely exercise absolute power over
their forces and are unable to survey the entire battlefield over which they
exercise command. In addition, as militaries have grown more complex to tackle
larger, more demanding missions, their internal systems–doctrine, training, staff
operations, even how a group of aircraft is spotted and launched from a flight
deck–have grown more complex as well, and thereby more prone to failure. This
is certainly true of the Japanese at Midway. This is not to say that individuals did
not make mistakes. But by the same token, upon closer examination, it is clear
that it wasn’t just Yamamoto or Genda who failed at Midway–in several
important ways, the entire institution of the Japanese Navy was to blame as well.
Cohen and Gooch propose that all military failures fall into three basic
categories: failure to learn from the past, failure to anticipate what the future
may bring, and failure to adapt to the immediate circumstances on the battlefield.
They further note that when one of these three basic failures occurs in isolation
(known as a simple failure), the results, while unpleasant, can often also be
overcome. Aggregate failures occur when two of the basic failure types, usually
learning and anticipation, take place simultaneously, and these are more difficult
to surmount. Finally, at the apex of failure stand those rare events when all three
basic failures occur simultaneously–an event known as catastrophic failure. In
such an occurrence, the result is usually a disaster of such scope that recovery is
impossible. Sadly for the Japanese, Midway must join the ignominious ranks of
this level of calamitous compound failure.
The first of these deadly military sins–failure to learn–indicates that a
military has been either unable or unwilling to adequately address the lessons of
the past. This may stem from a frank inability to understand or adequately
analyze what actually went wrong (or right) in earlier campaigns. Alternately, a
military organization may be forced, by tradition, politics, or other impediments,
to “put the blinders on,” thereby hampering its self-analysis and performance in
future operations.
Examined in this light, it is clear that the Imperial Navy’s failure to draw
correct conclusions from the past stemmed in large part from its crowning naval
triumph at Tsushima in 1905. From that decisive victory, the Japanese drew
three fundamental conclusions that would ultimately lead them to decisive
defeat. First, Tsushima seemed to confirm the notion that naval power could be
used to shape and control conflicts so that they remained localized and were
fought for limited objectives. The Japanese Navy’s role in the Russo-Japanese
War was to isolate the Korean peninsula, thwart the activities of the Russian
squadrons at Port Arthur and Vladivostok, and fight a decisive battle with the
main Russian battle fleet when it finally appeared near the Home Islands. In this
role, it was eminently successful, and the war was largely fought on ground
chosen by the Japanese.
Second, Tsushima (falsely) taught the lesson that victory at sea devolved
solely from winning climactic fleet engagements. This lesson seemed
inescapable, since Tsushima was one of the most decisive naval battles in
history, resulting in the utter annihilation of the Russian fleet. At the negligible
cost of three torpedo boats sunk, moderate damage to three capital ships and
some other smaller combatants, and the deaths of 110 sailors, Japan had caused
thirty-four of the thirty–eight Russian vessels that entered the Straits of
Tsushima to be either sunk, scuttled, captured, or interned. Over ten thousand
Russian sailors were either killed or captured.24 Very shortly thereafter, Russia
had been forced to initiate peace negotiations. If Tsushima seemed to prove
anything, it was that a single battle could determine the fate of two antagonists.
Indeed, in the Japanese view, a single battle was likely to determine the outcome
of the war as a whole.
Third, Tsushima implanted in the Imperial Navy the unfailing belief in the
primacy of offensive factors, as compared to defensive considerations. In that
battle, the superior speed of the Japanese battle line had allowed it to maneuver
freely and had been critical in dictating the gunnery range to the Russians. By
the same token, Japan’s unorthodox adoption of relatively lightweight main
battery ammunition (whose armor penetration characteristics were inferior, but
whose weight of explosive charge was much greater) had inflicted enormous
damage to the upperworks and control centers of the Russian battleships, thereby
throwing the enemy line into confusion. Thus, the Japanese believed that by
bringing greater firepower to bear at decisive ranges, they would be able to
defeat more numerous opponents. The seeds of this dogma had already been
planted during the Navy’s formative years, as the Japanese naturally adopted the
policies of their mentor, the Royal Navy, which advocated an aggressive attitude
toward naval engagements. But Tsushima cemented the notion that big guns
were the final arbiter of any naval encounter,25 a belief further reinforced by the
clash of heavily armed battle lines at Jutland.26
These three lessons were later fused unhealthily with Japan’s growing
fixation after the First World War on the possibility of war with the United
States. The Japanese understood that any such conflict would pit them against a
foe whose numerical superiority was ultimately ensured by overwhelming
industrial might. Seeing no way to fight numbers with numbers, the Imperial
Navy fell back on the unswerving belief that quality–if wielded with superior
skill and Japanese fighting spirit (Yamato damashii)–must be able to defeat
quantity. From this fundamental belief flowed every doctrinal and warship
design tenet in the Imperial Navy. As a result, the other traditional roles that
great navies throughout history have embraced–protecting one’s commerce,
destroying the commerce of the enemy, and conducting amphibious landings–
were strictly subjugated to the Imperial Navy’s overriding need to augment the
fleet’s raw offensive strength. Speed, range, and firepower were everything.
The problem was that none of these dictums was appropriate in the context
of a global war in the Pacific, particularly a protracted one. In the matter of using
naval power to limit the scope of a conflict, it is ironic that Japan’s opening
moves in the Pacific war had exactly the opposite effect. By attacking Pearl
Harbor, the Imperial Navy unilaterally ensured that the scope of the war it
unleashed would be unlimited. Now, instead of having to control a limited
number of seaways that led to a single geographic center of gravity (such as
Korea had been in 1904–05), Japan had elected to wage war across the entire
expanse of the Pacific. Under these circumstances, any geographical proscription
of the conflict was impossible.
As for the cherished notion of creating a single decisive battle that would
decide the course of the war, the Imperial Navy searched in vain throughout the
conflict for such an engagement–first at Midway, and then elsewhere. The
Japanese completely failed to understand that a power like the United States
could never be brought to ruin–or even to the bargaining table–as the result of a
single engagement, no matter how successful it was. The industrialized,
massively mobilized nature of World War II ensured that protracted warfare was
practically inevitable. In such a setting, nations could be defeated only after the
application of levels of cumulative force and destruction that beggared the
imagination.
The third lesson from Tsushima manifested itself in the Imperial Navy’s
continuing overemphasis on offensive factors. At the strategic level this meant
that its naval force structure, while formidable in frontline strength, did not
possess the characteristics needed for the protracted war it had unwittingly
purchased for itself. And operationally, it meant that Japan came to Midway
armed with a doctrinal outlook rigidly inclined toward the offensive. This is
evidenced by Genda’s eschewal of “wasting” air assets on scouting operations,27
Nagumo’s obvious preference for a coordinated counterstrike against the
Americans (even at the expense of speed), and the fact that Japan’s warships
were ill prepared to accept battle damage and survive. All of these factors had
deleterious effects at Midway.
However, perhaps the most important learning failure of the Imperial Navy
concerned lessons not from prior wars, but rather from the first five months of
the Pacific war itself. At the top of this list must stand the Navy’s inability to
correctly perceive the underlying reasons for its success up until April 1942.
Granted the Japanese had never fought a carrier vs. carrier battle prior to Coral
Sea. Yet, operational mass was clearly the key to its two most successful
campaigns of the initial war period–Pearl Harbor and the Indian Ocean foray. On
both of these occasions, Japan had equipped Kid Butai with every available
fleet carrier in the inventory and, in the process, had presented its opponents
with an insuperable tactical problem. Japan had won not because of its racial
superiority, or Yamato damashii, but because the Imperial Navy brought more
flight decks and more aircraft to the point of contact than its enemies could
muster in return.
By the same token, when the Japanese had attacked with marginal forces–
most notably at the Battle of Coral Sea, but also in such land operations as the
protracted siege of Bataan and the initial abortive invasion of Wake Island–they
had found the going much tougher. One might argue that at Coral Sea, the
Japanese did not actually believe their forces were going to be marginal to the
task, given the anticipated level of opposition. But this merely betrays the
Japanese failure to appreciate the capacity of modern carrier forces to move
across vast distances and launch powerful raids deep behind the nominal “front
line.” As was pointed out earlier, the only way for the Japanese to avoid being
outnumbered and ambushed by a suddenly appearing enemy carrier task force
that “wasn’t supposed to be there” was to bring the entirety of their own carrier
force to every major operation. There really was no middle ground in terms of
force allocation. Thus, without realizing it, the Japanese had ironically disproved
their own cherished notion of quality triumphing over quantity. Instead, quantity
had arguably been the critical factor in Japan’s seminal victories to date. Given
that fact, bringing the entire carrier force to an operation such as Midway was
absolutely imperative.
An astute naval leadership would have noticed this correlation, but the
Imperial Navy did not. Whether the cause was Victory Disease, or a simple
disinterest in learning lessons at this stage of the conflict, the result was a
lessening of intellectual rigor in the Navy during the first part of 1942. An
accurate perception of the strengths of massing many carrier decks together
should have inclined the Japanese toward a policy of fighting fewer battles but
carrying a bigger stick to each. Instead, the Imperial Navy exhibited a penchant
for doing precisely the opposite. The battles of Coral Sea and Midway make it
clear that the Japanese Navy was going after too many objectives at once. It was
dispersing its carrier assets, thereby casting aside its proven formula for victory.
In the process, it was unnecessarily elevating the Navy’s risk by placing
irreplaceable combat assets in situations where its weaker opponent could
temporarily concentrate superior numbers against them.
The fault in this respect can rightly be laid primarily at the feet of Admiral
Yamamoto, for it was he who had the dominant hand in crafting the Navy’s
strategy. Yet, it is apparent that Naval GHQ played a role as well, because it was
they who persuaded Yamamoto to take on operations like Coral Sea and
Operation AL, both of which would detract from the overall strength that the
Navy could wield against primary objectives. Not only did Yamamoto accept
these extra burdens with minimal protest, but when he did argue against them, it
was never because they dispersed his available carrier power, but because they
did not figure into his overall conception for how a decisive battle was to be
contrived. Had he been wise, he would have vigorously contested all such
secondary operations as being truly dangerous to Japan’s overall strategic
calculus. For this reason alone, Yamamoto should never have countenanced
independent operations by CarDiv 5. By the same token, Naval GHQ should not
have pushed the matter. For the fundamental truth remains that had CarDiv 5
been present in its entirety at Midway, it is difficult to see how the Americans
could have won, despite their superior intelligence and demonstrable luck. But
neither Yamamoto nor Naval GHQ apparently realized that preservation of
Japan’s critical offensive mass was essential to its ability to conduct decisive
battles.
There is a further irony, however, in that Yamamoto and Naval GHQ’s
failure to appreciate the virtues of mass at the operational level was matched by
an overemphasis on conservation of mass by Nagumo and his staff at the tactical
level. In fact, both of these tendencies had a dire impact on the outcome of the
battle. On the face of it, this seems contradictory– mass should be either “good”
or “bad.” But this points out the difficulty of meting out simple prescriptions for
victory or defeat in this very complex battle. Had Yamamoto supplied his
subordinate with true superiority of naval airpower at the point of contact, it
could have widened Nagumo’s tactical options immensely. Likewise, had
Nagumo been less concerned with launching a massed counterstrike from his
four decks during the battle, his options would have been commensurately
widened.
Other opportunities for learning during the early part of the war had also
presented themselves, although more fleetingly. The outcome of Coral Sea, for
instance, could have been such an occasion, but for various reasons it wasn’t.
For one thing, after recovering from its initial fury at Admiral Takagi for
supposedly failing to prosecute the battle aggressively enough, Combined Fleet’s
staff had then swung around in fairly short order to believing that the operation
had actually been another Japanese victory. In so doing, it blinded itself to its
own shortcomings, particularly with regard to having adequate forces on hand.
This opportunity was complicated, of course, by the fact that the time interval
between Coral Sea and Midway was so short. As such, there was scant time for
the fleet to fully absorb the two most important tactical implications of the
engagement, namely, that American carrier aviators should not be discounted
and that lone carrier divisions were not a replacement for a fully constituted Kid
Butai.
Yet, while it is true that the Japanese Navy was operating on an impossibly
tight schedule and that there was little time to absorb and process battle lessons,
it is also interesting to note that the time period between the Indian Ocean
operations and Midway hints at the start of a “learning gap” appearing between
the two navies. This was a phenomenon that would become increasingly evident
as the war progressed– the U.S. Navy as an organization often (although not
always) had a superior capacity for absorbing battle lessons and translating them
into doctrinal and technical modifications that would aid it in future battles.
For instance, the incident in the Indian Ocean, wherein a handful of British
bombers succeeded in surprising Kid Butai and nearly bombing Akagi, should
have been a wake-up call to the Japanese fleet that their air defense
arrangements were inadequate. It is clear that the Japanese took notice of this
incident– Hiry s after-action report emphasized the need for better long-range
detection capabilities against enemy aircraft. Yet, it doesn’t appear that any
concerted effort was made to enhance the capabilities of the fleet’s primary
defense mechanism–its combat air patrol–the failure of which would doom
Nagumo just two months later at Midway.
It is true that two months didn’t offer much time for the organizations
within the Japanese Navy responsible for producing doctrine (such as the
Yokosuka Air Group) to absorb the problem and produce a response.
Furthermore, before the advent of radar, and in the absence of adequate ship to
plane communications because of substandard radios in the Zero, there was only
so much that could be done to improve CAP performance. Thus, complex
changes in the carrier air defense arrangements certainly couldn’t be expected
within this time frame. By the same token, though, even some relatively simple
changes at the tactical level–insisting that the fighter shotai observe an iron
discipline in maintaining their sectors and requiring them to remain stacked at
prescribed altitudes–could have produced positive results at Midway. In the
absence of such discipline, though, the Japanese CAP operated organically and
tended to overreact, thereby affording the enemy open avenues of approach.
In contrast, it is striking that in the immediate aftermath of Coral Sea,
Yorktown’s crew was able to devise and implement a significant innovation in
the area of damage control that would go on to have a major impact for the
Americans. Machinist Oscar W Myers, Yorktown’s air department fuel officer,
had observed that the demise of Lexington was the result (among other things) of
an aviation gasoline fire on her hangar deck. He therefore contrived the notion of
draining the fuel system after usage and filling the pipes with inert CO2 gas.28
Yorktown’s skipper, Capt. Elliott Buckmaster, was quick to give his permission
to this innovation, which almost certainly prevented Yorktown’s suffering a
calamitous fire during Kobayashi’s dive-bomber attack on 4 June.
Similarly, American fighter pilots were finally beginning to come to grips
with the Japanese Zero. Though the genesis of Jimmy Thach’s famous “Thach
Weave” maneuver dated from as early as November 1941, his implementation of
it (albeit on a very limited scale) at Midway was symbolic of the U.S. Navy’s
efforts to learn and innovate in the face of Japan’s early–war superiority. This is
not to imply that the Japanese Navy was incapable of learning; that was certainly
not the case. But it is equally clear that at this point in the war, the accumulated
pressures of six months of defeats were forcing the U.S. Navy to adapt
frantically, and often successfully. In contrast, six months of victories were not
creating the same imperatives within the Imperial Navy.
The overall conclusion is inescapable–the Japanese Navy had a learning
problem. The cherished precepts that it had carried down from Tsushima–the
value of geographically limited wars, the primacy of offensive over defensive
factors, and the supremacy of big-gun navies–were largely inapplicable to World
War II. Furthermore, at its highest levels of command, the Navy had also failed
to grasp the lessons of the war they had launched. Not the least important of
these principles was the overriding importance in carrier warfare of numerical
superiority, despite having emphatically driven that very point home for all the
world to see at Pearl Harbor.
After failures of learning come those of anticipation. As Cohen and Gooch
point out, “The essence of a failure to anticipate is not mere ignorance of the
future, for that is inherently unknowable. It is, rather, the failure to take
reasonable precautions against a known hazard.”29 Along with its failures in
learning, it is clear that the Imperial Navy failed to anticipate as it went into the
battle of Midway.
At the level of operational planning, Genda was clearly guilty of failing to
foresee that a larger number of scouting aircraft would be required to implement
a thorough search. Furthermore, his plans should have accommodated the
possibility of variable weather conditions around the objective. Not only that,
but as has been previously pointed out, Genda–bright and generally competent as
he was–was the product of a military culture that emphasized the preservation of
offensive mass at almost all costs. Carrier attack planes could be used as scouts
during transits to the battlefield. But once battle was joined, scouting with attack
aircraft was to be avoided. If there weren’t enough floatplanes to do the job, it
just didn’t get done. In short, if Genda’s plan was flawed, it had failed along
institutionally predictable lines.
More puzzling, though, is Nagumo’s failure–on the basis of the intelligence
he had in hand before the battle–to anticipate that the American carriers might be
present off of Midway. It is clear that Nagumo probably ought to have been
suspicious of the level of American activity in the area, if nothing else. But he
chose not to act on this intelligence. In retrospect, Nagumo’s indecision was
probably partly the result of his own personality, which (by this point in his
career) was rigid, uninspired, and unfamiliar with the technical intricacies of the
force he commanded. These tendencies were further reinforced by the military
culture prevailing in the Imperial Navy, which valued conformity and obedience
over creativity or personal initiative.
However, as Admiral Ugaki, the U.S. Naval War College, and Walter Lord
all noted, the most crucial oversight in this respect was Yamamoto’s failure to
take precautions against the possibility that the Americans might, in fact, be
present off Midway in advance of their scripted arrival time in his battle plan.
This was driven by his personal belief that the Americans were all but beaten
and would need to be lured out to battle. As such, it was apparently
inconceivable that they would be lying in wait. As was mentioned previously,
Yamamoto was clearly guilty of the sin of planning operations around perceived
enemy intentions, rather than on the basis of the enemy’s likely capabilities.
The corollary failure that flowed from this assumption was Yamamoto’s
decision to disperse his forces in the face of the enemy. By subdividing his
superior mass into a welter of smaller formations that were not mutually
supportive, the overall battle plan was unnecessarily weakened. Despite the
plan’s details having been created by his operations officer, Captain Kuroshima
Kameto, as commander in chief, Yamamoto must shoulder ultimate
responsibility for this action. Yet it is interesting to note that throughout the war,
even as their strength weakened relative to the Americans, the Japanese never
lost their fondness for complex dispersed operations. For instance, one of
Yamamoto’s eventual successors, Admiral Toyoda Soemu, created a similar
monstrosity in 1944. Toyoda’s “Sho Go 1” plan, conceived for the defense of
the Philippines, featured multiple widely separated formations. Two separate
battle squadrons were designed to converge on the American invasion beaches at
Leyte, while Ozawa’s carrier force acted as bait to lure the American fleet
northward and open the way for the battleships. Japanese operations in the early
battles around Java and at Coral Sea, as well as later operations in the Eastern
Solomons and Santa Cruz, also featured multiple Japanese formations
maneuvering without the ability to mutually reinforce one another.
The conclusion from this is apparent. Had Yamamoto not been in charge of
Combined Fleet in April–May 1942, whoever was commanding Rengo Kantai
would likely have introduced a comparable level of complication into what
ought to have been a relatively straightforward exercise. Complex operations
were endemic to the Imperial Navy, not just Yamamoto. This love of intricacy
can be clearly detected in the 1920s and 1930s, when Japanese doctrine and fleet
exercises envisioned elaborate encircling maneuvers–often taking place at night–
unfolding like clockwork to trap the unwitting Americans.30
It is clear in this regard that Japanese naval strategy was influenced from its
very inception by Oriental philosophies on the conduct of war, which
emphasized the value of deception and indirect approaches. Akiyama Saneyuki,
the most brilliant thinker at the Imperial Navy’s Staff College at the turn of the
twentieth century, drew heavily not only on contemporary Western naval
practices, but also on ancient Oriental military masters such as Sun Tzu as he
began hammering out Japanese naval strategic thought at that time. Akiyama’s
principles, in particular his love of indirect approaches so as to conceal the true
objective of an operation, were seen by the Japanese as laying the strategic
foundation for the victory at Tsushima. From there, they were carried forward
into the interwar period and obviously still exerted a powerful influence at
Midway.31
Unfortunately, at Midway the Japanese encountered a strategic problem
where subtlety was a dangerous luxury. If ever a situation called for using brute
force, this was it. But Yamamoto, shaped by his institutional training, adopted an
elegant strategic approach that suited his service’s martial sensibilities, and it is
likely that any other graduate of the Imperial Naval Staff College would have
done likewise. In a nutshell, Japanese naval strategy was warped and was likely
to produce unworkable solutions no matter who was in charge of the planning. In
this sense, Chihaya’s complaint that the Japanese Navy had as “good as planned
for” its defeat at Midway is true–but the reasons for that defeat reached back
well before six months of overweening pride brought them into focus. Instead,
they had been built into the Navy’s strategic outlook over the course of decades.
One failure of anticipation, though, cannot be traced to institutional roots.
This was Yamamoto’s and Ugaki’s high-handed behavior during the May war
games on board Yamato. War gaming, when used objectively, is one of the most
important tools at the disposal of a professional military, revealing unforeseen
dangers and developing contingency plans to guard against them. In this vein,
the May games were ostensibly intended to prepare the fleet’s tactical
commanders for the coming operation. Yet from the very outset, Combined
Fleet’s Midway games were a farce. Rather than being approached honestly and
openly, the entire exercise was subordinated to the overriding political agendas
of Admiral Yamamoto. The games were merely a tool for pushing Combined
Fleet’s operational concepts through, no matter what objections might be raised.
Late-issued operational plans and blatantly rigged officiating not only led to the
sullen resignation of Admiral Nagumo from the proceedings, but also to a sense
that the remainder of the participants were merely “going through the motions.”
Thus, Combined Fleet’s commander in chief willfully mishandled one of his
most useful analytical tools on the eve of his most important battle.
Only a single insight worthy of the name emerged from this entire exercise–
the awareness that if an American carrier force appeared unexpectedly on
Nagumo’s flank, it could produce very unpleasant consequences for the
operation as a whole. But that realization merely resulted in the issuance of a
slapdash verbal instruction, namely, that Nagumo should keep half of his aircraft
armed for a naval strike at all times. During the actual battle, this same
instruction did little except needlessly restrict the force commander’s options.
Thus, Yamamoto’s sole attempt to rise to the challenge of anticipating the
enemy’s actions was counterproductive.
In sum, the Japanese Navy was clearly guilty of several crucial errors of
anticipation. Genda’s anemic reconnaissance scheme, Yamamoto’s obtuse battle
plan, even Kaga’s unlikely resurrection at the hand of Ugaki during the May war
games–all were indicative of a Navy that had failed miserably to foresee what
the future might bring. Instead, they habitually assumed that a “best case” rather
than a “worst case” scenario would unfold in their favor–a bad idea in military
planning.
Thus, the Japanese came to Midway with a flawed doctrine, having drawn
the wrong conclusions from the past, and having failed to absorb the most
critical lesson from the current conflict (failure one). Moreover, their battle plan
was similarly flawed and did not consider contingencies such as the American
fleet being present off of Midway (failure two). Nevertheless, despite these
glaring problems, Nagumo still might have won the battle, or at least have made
the outcome more even, if the Japanese had been able to adapt to the challenge
of their changed circumstances. After all, even without Sh kaku and Zuikaku,
the four carriers of Kid Butai were still the most powerful, proficient naval air
force on the planet. But here, too, the Imperial Navy failed on several levels,
both strategically immediately before the battle, and operationally during its
course.
By far the most important reason for these adaptive failures was an
unhealthy rigidity on the part of the Japanese regarding the sanctity of battle
plans. Indeed, this is a common theme for the imperial military that can be seen
not only at Midway, but throughout the Pacific war as well. “Plan inertia,” for
wont of a better term, was endemic to the mind-set of the Imperial Navy and was
the result of many factors. First, while characterizing a culture in general terms
is always suspect, it is probably safe to say that Japanese society prizes order
above most things. Furthermore, it is demonstrable that the Japanese as a people,
from the youngest to the oldest, intensely dislike making mistakes, particularly
in public. Plans–like social rituals–are a natural way of establishing and
codifying order and minimizing mistakes. This keenness on planning still
manifests itself today in Japan, with many large Japanese corporations creating
business plans that in some cases attempt to look into the future for decades– far
longer than the five-year horizons considered typical for large Western
businesses. Likewise, while the degree of actual control Japan’s postwar
Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) had during the decades of
Japan’s “economic miracle” may be arguable, the fact that Japan was one of the
few capitalist industrialized nations to engage in a systematic exercise in
national economic planning is not.
Not surprisingly, these central cultural tendencies manifested themselves
from the very beginnings of the Imperial Navy. Furthermore, the Navy’s plans
had been seen as paying substantial benefits throughout that time. It was good
planning that had allowed the Japanese to beat the Russians, particularly at
Tsushima, but more generally through the creation of the highly cohesive,
tactically homogeneous battle force that fought that war. In the same vein, the
interwar Navy had put great store in policies such as the “Eight-Eight Fleet,”
which sought during the years between 1907 and 1922 to create a powerful fleet
of eight new dreadnoughts and eight battlecruisers with which to counterweigh
American naval power in the Pacific. The notion of the Eight–Eight fleet, the
underlying rationale for which was actually fairly abstract (and questionable),
had become “an unquestioned article of faith” in the Navy up until the time the
Washington Naval Treaty did away with it.32 This same tendency resurrected
itself during the 1930s in the form of increasingly ambitious naval replenishment
plans, known informally as Circle Plans (Maru Keikaku), which greatly
expanded the power of the fleet immediately before the war.33
 On a more day–to–day basis, the Navy’s annual operational plan (nendo
sakusen keikaku), which was in force from 1 April to the following 31 March of
each year, defined in great detail the Navy’s activities for the following year.34
Drawn up by the Navy General Staff, the plan detailed the training to be carried
out, maneuvers to be held, and the tactical problems to be solved thereby.
Included in each were also detailed prescripted orders for first mobilizing the
fleet (suishi jumbi–“preparatory fleet mobilization”) and then shifting it over to
wartime hostilities (nendo teikoku kaigun senji hensen–“annual Imperial Navy
plan for wartime organization”). During any given year, of course, the Navy was
expected to be devoting itself to attaining the tactical proficiency necessary to
win the Decisive Battle, many of whose tactical precepts had become
increasingly scripted and choreographed as the 1930s went on.35
This love of planning had paid handsome results during the opening moves
of the Pacific war for both Japanese service branches. The proficiency
demonstrated during the attack on Pearl Harbor is the most famous example of
this. Admiral Yamamoto, and more particularly Capt. Kuroshima Kameto, had
taken a bold operational vision and hammered it into a sound operational plan in
very short order. Pearl Harbor introduced the revolutionary use of massed carrier
airpower, as well as tactical innovations like the famous use of wooden fins that
enabled air-dropped torpedoes to operate in the shallow waters of the harbor. No
less inspired was the Imperial Army’s routing of the British in Malaya–an
invasion force on bicycles harrying a professional army twice its size to utter
destruction in just nine weeks–which was built around a core of solid staff work
completed before the war. In the course of these planning exercises, the Japanese
Army had identified key overland attack routes, as well as the degree of combat
engineering (particularly bridge-building) capabilities that would be required to
win the campaign.36 All of these efforts had resulted in brilliant, and well-
deserved, victories.
Yet, too much of any good thing can have its drawbacks, and it is clear that
the Japanese held their plans in such high regard that, once in place, they were
loath to alter them. This manifested itself in Yamamoto’s failure to adapt to the
setback at Coral Sea. By not allowing Operation MI’s timetable to slip, he lost
the chance to include either member of CarDiv 5 in the starting lineup, and thus
condemned Nagumo to fight on even terms at Midway, rather than from a
position of strength. By the same token, Yamamoto’s failure to adjust to
Nagumo’s one-day delay in sailing meant that Tanaka’s Invasion Force was
prematurely exposed to detection, which confirmed the Americans in their
suspicions that Japanese carriers could shortly be expected off Midway. Neither
did he adjust his plans when it became evident Operation K would fail to
produce timely information on the disposition of the American fleet.
At an operational level, plan inertia manifested itself in a stubborn
unwillingness to adapt immediately before and during battle. Karl von
Clausewitz’s famous maxim that “No battle plan survives first contact with the
enemy,” probably never met with a less enthusiastic audience than the Imperial
Navy. Obviously, Vice Admiral Nagumo had his share of difficulties in this
respect. Besides his unwillingness to act on his latest intelligence estimates,
Nagumo also failed in two other critical respects. First, he didn’t launch a quick
counterstrike against the Americans when the occasion demanded. Second, by
closing directly on the Americans once they were discovered, he maneuvered his
force in such a way as to expose it to greater danger than was prudent. In both of
these instances, of course, he was influenced by prevailing Japanese doctrine,
which favored closing aggressively with the enemy and delivering a coordinated,
annihilating blow.
Yamaguchi, of course, did not adapt successfully to his circumstances,
either. By failing to carefully gauge the strength of Hiry and her air group, he
placed his force in an increasingly dangerous position with little chance of
commensurate reward. Yamaguchi stands as the archetypal Japanese warrior in
this respect–aggressive, unwilling or unable to back down, and more concerned
with preserving his own personal honor than preserving the combat assets of the
nation. And as has been shown, contrary to the prevailing view of the battle,
Nagumo was his coequal in this aggressiveness, even when the long odds against
his success militated strongly for an expeditious withdrawal.
British Field Marshal William Slim, who had been defeated in Burma by
the Japanese in early 1942, but who would later return the favor by crushing
them in the same theater in 1944, beautifully captured the spirit of his enemies in
an excerpt written about the Japanese Army. He remarked:

The Japanese were ruthless and bold as ants while their designs went
well, but if their plans were disturbed or thrown out–ant-like again–they fell
into confusion, were slow to re-adjust themselves, and invariably clung too
long to their original schemes. This, to commanders with their
unquenchable military optimism, which rarely allowed in their narrow
administrative margins for any setback or delay, was particularly
dangerous. The fundamental fault of their generalship was a lack of moral,
as distinct from physical, courage. They were not prepared to admit that
 they had made a mistake, that their plans had misfired and needed recasting.
… Rather than confess that, they passed on to their subordinates,
unchanged, the order that they themselves had received, well knowing that
with the resources available the tasks demanded were impossible. Time and
again, this blind passing of responsibility ran down a chain of disaster… .
They scored highly by determination; they paid heavily for lack of
flexibility.37

This passage might just as easily have been written about Midway, as it
perfectly encapsulates the problems the Japanese had when it came to altering
their battle plans. In the matter of lack of moral courage, Yamamoto, Nagumo,
and Yamaguchi were all quite clearly guilty as charged. Equally perceptive is
Slim’s insight that sticking with a plan, even a bad plan, was a mechanism
whereby the Japanese individual could personally absolve himself of
responsibility for a defeat. Too often, though, the price for doing so was needless
casualties, or even the outright destruction of one’s force, typically followed by
the atoning suicide of the commander in question. All in all, this was not an
effective model for winning a war against a numerically superior opponent.
By the same token, it is clear from many of the failures of learning and
adaptation just discussed that the Japanese entered the Battle of Midway wearing
doctrinal handcuffs, the effect of which was to retard still further their ability to
innovate. Whereas American doctrine is generally presented to a commander as
a codification of guidelines concerning the effective conduct of combat, the very
nature of the Japanese military culture made its own doctrine far more rigid with
regards to interpretation. This manifested itself in Nagumo and Genda’s
disinclination to augment their tactical scouting assets with carrier strike assets,
even in the face of accumulating evidence that the Americans were more alert
than they ought to have been.
In the same way, the apparent unwillingness of First Air Fleet staff to even
consider splitting the attacking power of Kid Butai after discovering the
Americans later in the morning originated in doctrinal imperatives. Launching a
quick attack against the Americans with CarDiv 2’s kanbaku before Tomonaga’s
recovery, difficult though this would have been to implement, might have given
the Japanese their best possibility to inflict more harm on their opponent than
they actually managed. Yet, Japanese doctrine prescribed massed airpower as the
correct answer to any tactical problem that arose, and Nagumo and his staff
dogmatically stuck to that formula.
Likewise, Nagumo’s doctrinaire decision to close directly on the Americans
had the effect of leaving his fleet positioned between two hostile forces (Midway
and the American carriers). A decision to maneuver more freely, either to the
north or northwest, could have mitigated some of the advantages that the
Americans had accrued by virtue of the superior (and wholly intentional) initial
positioning. Despite the Japanese love of indirect approaches at a strategic level,
their love of closing directly to knife-fighting range at the tactical level was
never better demonstrated than at Midway.
Some of these problems stemmed from the simple fact that in early 1942
the aircraft carrier was still a brand–new weapon system. As such, the body of
doctrinal thinking in all the carrier navies was relatively small and still maturing.
Other navies might have viewed an immature doctrine as being a tacit admission
that some degree of interpretation by unit commanders would be required during
the course of battle. The Japanese apparently did not see things this way–they
stuck to the playbook, small as it might be. When improvisation was called for,
they answered with the most expedient, and transparent tactic available–charging
the enemy. Thus, in the critical matter of adaptation, the Japanese likewise failed
abysmally.
Taken as a whole, the inescapable conclusion that emerges from a careful
examination of the battle is the fact that the Japanese defeat was not the result of
some solitary, crucial breakdown in Japanese designs. It was not the result of
Victory Disease, nor of a few crucial personal mistakes. Rather, what appears is
a complex, comprehensive web of failures stretching across every level of the
battle–strategic, operational, and tactical. Every aspect of the enterprise was
tainted in some way. The surface manifestations of these deeper failures may
ultimately have been a host of mistakes committed by individuals. And some of
those mistakes were clearly more important that others. But the vast majority of
them were in some way symptomatic of larger failures within the Japanese
military and within the Navy’s cultural fabric, its doctrine, and its preferred
modes of combat. They were the end products of an organization that failed to
learn correctly from its past, failed to plan correctly for its future, and then failed
to adapt correctly to circumstances once those plans were shown to be flawed.
Intriguingly, the seeds of many of these errors had been planted some forty
years before, through the initial teachings of the Japanese Naval Staff College,
and from the flower of Japan’s greatest victory–the Battle of Tsushima. They
had lain unnoticed all that time, growing unchecked, waiting for the right time,
place, and individuals to give them expression. Instead of culling these warped
seedlings, the Japanese Navy had fostered their growth in the 1930s. The twin
pressures of a violent nationalism, combined with the sure knowledge that they
would be the underdog in any war with America, had conspired to skew Japan’s
naval policies and doctrine still further during that time period. As a result, by
the time the Pacific war began, and despite its undoubted tactical prowess, the
Navy’s ability to mentally fight the war at a strategic and operational level was
already fatally damaged. It was at Midway that the breadth of these
shortcomings finally revealed themselves, with catastrophic results for both the
Imperial Navy and the Japanese nation. Of course, in the larger context of the
war, the Battle of Midway was just one of the first of a much greater harvest of
bitter fruit that would fall from the poisoned tree of Japanese militarism.
The military defeats that began with the Battle of Midway stem from the
harsh reality that, far from being the truly modern, progressive institution that it
fondly imagined itself to be, the Imperial Navy was in fact possessed of the most
parochial of outlooks. Instead of the quick, limited war Japan’s military
leadership envisioned, the Pacific war soon revealed itself to be all
encompassing and all consuming. In a shockingly short time, America had
begun waging war against Japan across every strategic dimension available to a
great industrial power–military, political, economic, and scientific. Japan was
assaulted on the ground, through the air, and on and under the sea. Ultimately, it
was beaten decisively in every one of these arenas. In this sense, Midway was
merely symptomatic of the Imperial military’s larger failings. Most obvious was
their fatally misguided decision to launch a war of aggression against the most
powerful nation on earth. Having done so, moreover, they found themselves
engaged in a conflict whose scope and complexity forced its participants to
evolve at a frenetic pace. As it developed, for the Japanese this was a particularly
daunting challenge. Despite the amazing speed with which they had modernized
their fighting forces after 1848, they were still bound by thought patterns linked
to an earlier military and cultural era, as well as the warped legacy of Tsushima.
In the final analysis, it is no exaggeration to say that the conflict the Japanese
military instigated in 1941 was not only beyond its resources, but also beyond its
understanding.
23

Assessing the Battle’s Importance

Having examined why the Japanese lost, the next step is to consider the
impact of that loss. Much like identifying the true reasons for failure, evaluating
the importance of the Battle of Midway is a slippery proposition. For an
engagement often labeled the “decisive” battle of the Pacific war, this is
inevitable–great battles by definition spawn a wealth of downstream
consequences, each of which can be looked at independently. Accordingly,
answers to the question “what did Midway really mean?” typically come in three
varieties–material, strategic, and counterfactual. The first focuses on the
importance of such things as aircraft losses, the loss of skilled aircraft
mechanics, and the size of Japan’s pilot training programs. The second analyzes
what effect the defeat at Midway had on Japan’s strategy for the remainder of
the war. The third seeks to illustrate the importance of Midway by creating
“what if” scenarios (some well thought out, some verging on the delusional) that
change the outcome of the Second World War in some way, depending on the
outcome of this one battle. All of these will be considered in turn. Yet, within the
scope of an operational-based study such as this one, the first imperative is to
consider what it meant to Japan to lose the services of four aircraft carriers.
The question might better be phrased in terms of what it meant to lose two
carrier divisions, in particular Carrier Divisions 1 and 2. Stated this way, the
question acknowledges that the Japanese Navy had brought the concept of
multicarrier operations to a higher level of practice than any other navy. It also
emphasizes that what was lost was not just “X number” of ships, planes, or men,
but rather a well-functioning assemblage of the three. CarDivs 1 and 2 were
incredibly complex weapons systems, forged through years of training and
experimentation. All the material elements composing these systems need to be
considered when assessing the damage suffered on 4 June, 1942.
There has been a tendency when analyzing the battle to both under-and
overestimate the importance of these material factors. For instance, most early
accounts of the battle casually assumed that the sinking of the Japanese carriers
ipso facto destroyed the cream of Japan’s carrier aviators and therefore put a
stop to Japanese expansion. The truth is more complex. Works such as John
Prados’s Combined Fleet Decoded have corrected the record by noting that the
battle itself did not signal the end of the Japanese naval aviator corps. This view
is directly supported by the carriers’ operational records. Kaga suffered twenty-
one aircrew deaths (both in the air and on board ship), S ry ten, and Akagi a
mere seven. Hiry ’s air group was the exception, suffering casualties in excess
of 50 percent, with seventy-two fatalities, including her air group leader and
many officers.1 Included with these must also be the eleven floatplane crewmen
who perished. However, the deaths of 121 airmen, though painful, did not
constitute a disaster in itself. In fact, Japan would lose a similar number of
aviators (110) at the Battle of the Eastern Solomons in August 1942,2 and two
dozen more than that (145) at the Battle of Santa Cruz in October 1942.3 The
losses at Midway certainly did not radically degrade the fighting capabilities of
Japanese naval aviation as a whole, which probably boasted around two
thousand carrier qualified aircrew at the beginning of the war.4 Rather, it would
take the hellish attrition of the Solomons campaign to initiate a fatal downward
spiral in Japanese carrier aircrew proficiency, with the Battle of Santa Cruz
marking the effective end of the elite prewar cadres.
Prados also notes the negative effects that losing hundreds of highly skilled
aircraft mechanics and technicians had on the Imperial Navy. The Midway
carriers between them counted 721 aircraft technicians killed, or more than 40
percent of the total number embarked. These men were difficult to replace, given
Japan’s less-mechanized society than that of its foe, the United States. Their loss
(in conjunction with the large number of skilled technicians who were later to be
isolated and effectively lost at Rabaul during the Solomons campaign) would
have a direct impact on Japan’s ability to field a modern carrier aviation force
during the battles of 1944. To the toll of mechanics might also be added the
deaths of other essential crewmen, such as flight deck crew, armorers, and other
personnel involved in supporting flight operations. These men had trained
together for years to reach the highest level of operational proficiency the
Japanese Navy would ever attain.
This attrition in personnel points to a more abstract loss, namely, that of
organizational knowledge. It is not possible simply to conjure up three thousand
men, a hundred fifty aircraft, and two carriers and expect them to operate
smoothly. Sh kaku and Zuikaku discovered this during the early phases of the
war. Their tardy rearming operations in the Indian Ocean had certainly caused
Nagumo considerable distress. Likewise, while recovering the final strike of 8
May at the Battle of the Coral Sea, a lack of deck-handling speed on board
Zuikaku had forced the jettisoning of a dozen precious aircraft over the side in
order to recover the remainder of the planes still aloft. Thus, even several
months after being commissioned, it is clear that CarDiv 5 was still not operating
at the same level as CarDiv 1 and 2, despite having spent much of its time in
company with the veteran carriers. Eventually, Sh kaku and Zuikaku would both
exhibit a very high level of operational ability, but reaching that level took a
long time. At a point in the war when Japan needed to be fighting as audaciously
and efficiently as possible, the void left by the loss of two senior carrier
divisions could not be filled by more junior practitioners.
All of these points have merit. Aircraft were certainly precious to Japan at
this point in 1942. And the collective worth of human, organizational, and
tactical capital must certainly be borne in mind, particularly in a war in which
the Japanese so frequently squandered these important commodities. But the
point that gets lost in all this is the critical significance of the flight decks
themselves. It’s almost as if the rush to acknowledge the importance of pilots
and airplanes to the new mode of warfare has blinded modern observers to the
overwhelming importance of the aircraft carrier as a strategic naval asset.
Without flight decks to deliver planes and pilots into combat, the naval aviation
revolution was negated, because at a fundamental level, “power projection”
absolutely requires a base from which to project it. And it was this mobile base
that was by far the most expensive and least expendable component in the
overall system.
Japan began the war with nine carriers. Six of them–Akagi, Kaga, S ry ,
Hiry , Sh kaku, and Zuikaku–were fleet carriers, large and fast enough to
operate a credibly sized air group. The other three were light carriers H sh , Ry
j , and Zuih . Of these three, H sh was old, tiny and slow. Ry j was scarcely
better, being cramped, structurally suspect, and possessed of but a single suitable
elevator. Of the three, only Zuih was truly capable of being integrated into the
main carrier fleet. By the time of Midway, Japan had already commissioned and
then lost Zuih ’s equally useful sister, Shoho, at the Battle of the Coral Sea.
Japan had also commissioned Juny and Hiy . Converted ocean liners, they
were larger than the light carriers and could actually mount a decent-sized air
group. However, they were possessed of cranky hybrid power plants (composed
of military boilers mated with commercial-type turbines) that produced
suboptimal speeds. As a result, while they were used in the role for wont of
anything better, they were hardly adequate replacements for true fleet carriers.
The reality was that the smaller Japanese carriers could only play bit parts
in the Pacific war. This is not to say that they weren’t useful–they were certainly
welcome additions for supporting amphibious landing operations, and they could
provide a limited local air presence. But they came with many drawbacks, the
most fundamental being the small size of their air groups. Carrier air groups are
subject to economies of scale. They need to be large enough to scout and to
supply defensive fighters to protect the mother ship and still be able to deliver a
large offensive punch. Delivering a single attack with, say, thirty-two attack
aircraft is almost always superior to sending in two separate sixteen-plane
attacks, because larger strike forces have a better chance of saturating the
enemy’s defenses. Having a single carrier large enough to launch a decisive
strike on its own was an important advantage in this respect. With an air group
of twenty to thirty aircraft, light carriers simply did not have enough planes to go
around. They could barely screen themselves, let alone deliver an attack of
credible size.
Furthermore, the shipboard infrastructure necessary to support the air
group–repair shops, command and control facilities, fueling stations, magazines,
and bomb storage rooms–was also more efficiently delivered via a larger ship.
Not only that, but it was easier to provide adequate escorts for a single large
warship than for two smaller ones mounting the same number of aircraft–a
critical factor in a navy as short of destroyers as Japan’s. For all these reasons,
deploying two light carriers did not produce the effectiveness or efficiency of a
single fleet carrier with an air group of more than sixty aircraft. Light carriers
could only complement, not replace, the functions of the fleet carriers. And with
the exception of Zuih , none of them were really worth the extra effort of
slowing the fleet carriers down in order to have them around.
Viewed in this light, it is apparent that the coin of naval power in the
Pacific war must be measured by the number of fleet carriers available to the
opposing navies. Reckoned this way, Japan started the war at something like
parity with the U.S. Navy. The USN fielded five large carriers–Lexington,
Saratoga, Yorktown, Enterprise, and Wasp-to Japan’s six. By the time of
Midway, the addition of Hornet had been negated by the loss of Lexington, as
well as heavy damage to Saratoga, leaving the score six to four in favor of
Japan. The number of naval aircraft carried by these respective forces only
slightly favored the Japanese, though, because of the larger American air groups.
After Midway, however, the ratio was three to two in favor of the United States,
a significant shift.
The importance of these vessels is even more obvious, considering that
each of them represented a phenomenal expenditure of national resources. At the
time of their completion, Akagi and Kaga were by far the most expensive
warships ever built for the Japanese Navy to that date, costing roughly ¥53
million apiece to complete. In terms of specific cost (i.e., cost/ton of
displacement), they were twice as expensive as a battleship of the same era. This
was a result of the intricate nature of carrier design, including the provision of
complex pumping and aviation gasoline systems, elaborate damage-control
equipment, and the emplacement of defensive guns and their associated fire-
control systems. In Akagi’s and Kaga’s cases, these costs were driven even
higher by the redesign efforts necessary to convert existing capital ship hulls into
functional carriers. Each had also undergone comprehensive, multiyear refits in
the 1930s, consuming millions more. S ry and Hiry , with their relatively
modest price tags of ¥40.2 million, must have seemed like bargains when they
were completed in 1937 and 1939. To these basic procurement costs, of course,
must also be added the price of their air groups, and the annual costs of
operation.5 Accordingly, any analysis of the Midway battle that fails to accord
the proper gravity to losing the core component of a national defense capability
that was fourteen years in the making (i.e., Kid Butai) utterly misjudges the
nature of the Pacific war. Big carriers didn’t just grow on trees–losing four of
them in an afternoon was tantamount to a national disaster. Particularly within
the time frame of the short conflict Japan hoped to fight, these losses were
crushing and utterly irredeemable.
One might contend that the losses in aircrew and/or aircraft were of similar
magnitude, but neither of these arguments is supportable. Of the two, the case
for human capital perhaps has more merit, in that Japanese carrier aircrewmen
were, at the time, among the most highly trained aviators in the world. The
airmen lost at Midway would certainly have been useful in forthcoming carrier
battles in the Solomons. However, it is worth remembering that seventy-four of
these men were killed in the air, doing what carrier airmen are supposed to do,
that is, attacking the enemy or defending the fleet. Even if Japan had won the
Battle of Midway with their carriers unscathed, these men would still have been
dead. Only the remaining thirty-six were shipboard fatalities.
It must also be recalled that the relatively small size of Japan’s naval air
corps was largely a self-imposed limitation. As a nation of over eighty million
people, Japan certainly had the population necessary to develop a much larger
cadre of pilots had it decided to do so. The reasons Japan chose to create an
artificially small group of elite pilots, instead of a larger corps of aviators who
were merely very good, lies outside the scope of this study.6 So, too, does
Japan’s failure to recognize and correct its deficiencies in this area while there
was still time to do so in early 1942. However, the fact that she was eventually
able to find pilots, however poorly trained, for the 50,000 aircraft she would lose
during the war establishes beyond doubt that the necessary manpower was
available.
Any assessment of the scale of Midway’s human losses must also be
measured against the backdrop of the grim combat in the South Pacific that
unfolded beginning in August 1942. It was here, in the daily patrols, skirmishes,
and raids that lasted until 1944 that the creme of Japan’s naval air forces would
be destroyed–some 2,817 naval aircraft alone between April 1942 and April
1943.7 Callous as it may seem, the existence or nonexistence of roughly one
hundred carrier aircrew meant relatively little when set against this aerial meat
grinder. People and planes were merely fuel for the vast furnaces of attritional
combat that would soon be blazing on the southern borders of the empire.
For a reader in this century, living in a wealthy country where the loss of a
single multimillion-dollar fighter is front-page news, it is difficult to internalize
the scale and intensity of the violence that occurred during the Second World
War. Aircraft were cheap. A typical fighter cost between $50,000 and $100,000;
a medium bomber roughly double that.8 They were produced in huge numbers.
The United States built in excess of 306,000 combat aircraft during the war;
Japan more than 67,000.9 Planes were a commodity, like trucks or artillery
tubes, and were treated as such. They were consumed at frightening rates. The
United States lost somewhere between 9,000 and 27,000 aircraft to all causes in
the Pacific theater alone, depending on the sources consulted. Japan lost 38,000
to 50,000 during the same period. Even accepting the more conservative figures,
Japan was producing a weekly average of around 350 planes, and was losing
over 200 of them. Granted that in 1942 the Japanese aircraft industry was not yet
producing at nearly the rate it would in 1944, but these figures make it clear that
even the loss of 257 carrier planes and floatplanes over three days could be made
good in a few weeks. Conversely, the carrier losses themselves were not made
good on a one-for-one basis until the commissioning of Shinano on 19
November, 1944, 127 weeks after the debacle of Midway, and at a point when
the war was already all but lost.
A corollary to the loss of these four ships was the permanent loss of tactical
homogeneity in the Japanese carrier force. Uniformity of operational
characteristics was a central principle that had guided the Japanese Navy’s
shipbuilding policies since its inception and that had served the Navy well from
Tsushima onward.10 The six heavy carriers that attacked Pearl Harbor composed
an exceptionally well-balanced formation-the stolid warhorses of Carrier
Division 1, the dashing cavaliers of Carrier Division 2, and the promising
yearlings of Carrier Division 5. The pairs of ships that made up these three
carrier divisions were well matched in terms of their speed, range, and aircraft
complements. The reason for employing ships of roughly similar capabilities is
simple–in the heat of battle, compensating for ships possessing widely differing
capabilities introduces an unnecessary element of complexity into an already-
chaotic situation. Uniformity lessens command and control friction. Losing
CarDivs 1 and 2 permanently destroyed the admirable balance and integration
that had existed in the Japanese carrier force.
After the battle, Sh kaku and Zuikaku were a solid core around which to
rebuild, but Japan’s inadequacies in shipbuilding meant that its two remaining
fleet carriers would have a supporting cast of bit players, most of whom were
really not up to their parts. Taih , commissioned in 1944, was the only new fleet
carrier Japan built during the entire war that was worthy of keeping company
with Sh kaku and Zuikaku. These three were the only carriers that Japan
possessed during the war that were in any way comparable to the three American
Yorktown-class carriers, let alone the dozen Essex-class carriers that followed
them. The Unry -class vessels, though worthy successors to Hiry and S ry ,
were not nearly as capable as their American opponents. The remainder of
Japan’s flight decks were conversions and misfits. So, despite being able to field
nominally similar numbers of carriers in 1942 and 1944, Japan’s carrier force
never remotely approached the balance, cohesiveness, and striking power of
Dai-Ichi Kid Butai at the beginning of the war. Men and planes could be
replaced, but the four Midway carriers could not. Their loss permanently ruined
what had been the most successful Japanese naval weapon system of the war,
and hence must be ranked as far and away the most important material loss of
the battle.
A second facet of any assessment of Midway must be the strategic
consequences of having lost, which requires looking beyond mere tabulation of
physical losses. The material forces of the United States and Japan were not
static–they were always changing in relative strength depending on a variety of
other factors–geography, weather, lines of communication, and who held the
strategic initiative. Thus, H. P. Willmott noted in his analysis of the Battle of
Coral Sea that the balance sheet for the engagement had to be assessed not
materially, but rather “in terms of the demands made on resources by time and
distance. The ability to concentrate mobile forces to dictate the direction and
tempo of future operations was the all-important factor in the conduct of the
Pacific war. The true cost of the battle was not to be found in calculations of ship
losses but rather in contrasting the effect of the battle on the carrier forces.”11
This calculus applies equally well to Midway, and the true locus of that battle’s
downstream effects rightly lies in the waters off Guadalcanal.
 Japan had entered the war with the intention of eventually moving to a
barrier defense backed by mobile carrier and air forces. The real litmus test of
Japanese strategy was therefore to capture what was needed while preserving its
strategic mass for as long as possible. As was noted earlier, the best way to
preserve mass is to use it en masse instead of doling it out in penny packets.
Using overwhelming force tends to keep casualties to a minimum. For the
Japanese, if an objective wasn’t important enough to require sending all six
carriers, it wasn’t worth going after at all. Japan violated this principle by
initiating the action in the Coral Sea. She paid the ultimate price for her violation
a month later at Midway. One immediate consequence of the calamity was that
Operation FS–the occupation of Fiji and Samoa to cut off Australia from her
lines of communication with the United States–was canceled. Another
consequence was the obviation of Japan’s barrier strategy before it had truly
begun. Without a powerful carrier striking force to transport aircraft to outposts
under attack, the strategy was unworkable.
This was illustrated when the Americans unexpectedly counterattacked at
Guadalcanal in August 1942. The occupations of both Guadalcanal and Tulagi
by the Japanese was both an extension of their defensive perimeter outward from
the main Japanese base in the region, Rabaul, and an offensive move to apply
pressure against Australia’s supply lines. As such, Guadalcanal was essentially
an outpost of Japan’s defensive barrier in the southwest Pacific.
Had the Japanese won the Battle of Midway, an American operation like
Guadalcanal most likely could never have occurred, at least not when it did.
However, the victory at Midway gave the Americans rough parity in fleet
carriers and enough confidence in their abilities that they were willing to fight in
a remote backwater like the Solomons. Likewise, the rough parity of carrier
forces of the two sides contributed to the protracted nature of the bloody struggle
for the island.
It is important to understand that the Japanese, while privately
acknowledging the seriousness of the defeat at Midway, did not feel that they
had been condemned ipso facto to fighting on unequal terms around
Guadalcanal. It did not affect their strategic formulations, and it did not temper
their aggressiveness. Indeed, in the short term, they were able to stay in the game
in the waters off Guadalcanal. At this point in the conflict, even after the losses
she had suffered, Japan still possessed the means to equip the air groups of
several more fleet carriers, had the ships themselves been available. The truth of
this statement is revealed in the prodigious scale of aerial resources the Japanese
were ultimately able to commit to the Solomons contest, as well as the fact that
Japan deployed credible air groups at various points in the struggle on board Hiy
 , Juny , and Zuih .
With Sh kaku and Zuikaku forming the basis of their new mobile force, and
the unexpected woes of the American carriers at the hands of Japanese
submarines (Saratoga was torpedoed and put out of action again from
September to November 1942, and Wasp was sunk by I-19 on 15 September),
the odds did not turn against Japan immediately. Of the two major carrier battles
fought off Guadalcanal–Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz-the Japanese lost the
former but arguably won the latter. But even when they achieved what appeared
to be temporary victories in the waters around Guadalcanal, they lacked the
strength to capitalize on their triumphs. They could no longer “close out the
deal” by inflicting a final, crushing defeat, driving off the American support
vessels, and exterminating the U.S. forces on the island. Had even Hiry or
Akagi survived Midway, which was not inconceivable, the Japanese might have
had the requisite strength to prevail four to six months later in these crucial
waters.
Much worse lay in store after the Imperial Navy conceded defeat at
Guadalcanal. By the end of 1942, the carrier forces of both sides were exhausted
and depleted, leaving the remainder of the brutal fighting in the Solomons to be
conducted by surface vessels and land-based airpower. The carrier fleets would
not meet again in battle until 1944. But by the middle of 1943, the Americans
were commissioning Essex-class fleet carriers at the rate of one every other
month, a production rate that the Japanese in their wildest dreams could never
equal. With nine very serviceable light carriers of the Independence class also
having been commissioned in the same year, American naval aviation was now
poised to transform the Pacific war.
At the same time, not only had the Americans fundamentally altered the
raw numbers in the fleet carrier equation, they had also radically transformed the
intrinsic power of the individual flight decks themselves. The addition of a new
generation of carrier aircraft (in particular the excellent F6F Hellcat fighter), the
improvement of air search and fire-control radar, the maturation of the Combat
Information Center (CIC) in combination with more effective fighter-vectoring
techniques, and the enormous increase in the number and effectiveness of
shipboard antiaircraft batteries (including those armed with radar proximity-
fused ammunition) all meant that ship-for-ship American carriers were now
markedly superior to those of the Japanese. Almost as important was the U.S.
Navy’s development of a sophisticated mobile logistics capability-fast oilers and
transports, repair ships, and floating dry docks–giving the Americans an
unparalleled ability to forward deploy their fleet anchorages and then keep
carriers operating in enemy waters for weeks at a time through underway
replenishment. Not only was American naval aviation thus capable of
threatening areas of the empire once thought to be off-limits, it could also
maintain a much higher tempo of operations than the imperial fleet could. So
impressive was this cumulative leap in technology and operational technique
that, in effect, the Americans emerged in late 1943 with an entirely new navy.12
All of these factors came together during the American invasion of the
Gilbert Islands in November 1943. To support Operation Galvanic, the U.S.
Navy employed six fleet, five light fleet, and seven escort carriers. The Japanese
Navy had no possibility of interdicting such a powerful armada. Several of their
carrier air groups had recently been transferred to Rabaul for temporary duty in
stemming the American tide then rising in the Solomons. They had been chewed
to pieces in the process, ruining the ability of their carriers to offer battle. The
best the Imperial Navy could manage was sending a few cruisers and a squadron
of submarines to the Gilberts. Just three months later, the Americans used a
similarly enormous carrier force to crush the heretofore unassailable Japanese
base at Truk. In the process, they sank nearly 150,000 tons of merchant shipping
and annihilated Japanese airpower on the atoll. The pattern was now set for
subsequent American offensives through the Central Pacific, in which their
powerful carrier task groups operated practically at will, bringing hundreds of
aircraft to their objectives, and destroying whatever naval opposition stood in
their way.
Here, then, is the crux of the matter as it relates to Midway and the larger
strategic forces at play in the Pacific war. In an immediate sense, an American
victory at Midway was vitally important in restoring the parity of forces in the
Pacific, and thereby speeding up the tempo of the war. But viewed in the longer
term, the battle’s strategic importance is less profound. Whether or not Kid
Butai had survived intact at Midway, it is clear that the very best the Japanese
could have hoped for by the end of 1943 was the ability to offer battle on terms
that were merely disadvantageous, rather than utterly ruinous. Even had every
carrier that attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941 sallied forth intact in 1943
to face the Americans off the Gilberts, the outcome there would almost certainly
have been disastrous. At most, the defeat at Midway cost the Japanese
approximately eighteen months of strategic leverage that their four carriers
might have bought them. But in the end, win or lose at Midway, the vast
industrial resources of the United States gave its navy an absolutely irrevocable
writ of strategic dominance in the Pacific war.
This leads to the third major topic to be considered–answering the
hypothetical question of what it might have meant for the Japanese to win at
Midway. Throughout the years, the various answers to this question–seen in both
books and an endless stream of Internet bulletin board and listserve
conversations–have spanned the gamut from measured to downright hysterical.
Hawaii would have been captured; the West Coast of the United States would
have been threatened or even invaded; Australia would have been captured;
America would have abandoned the Pacific and focused on Germany; or,
alternately, America would have poured yet more resources into the Pacific at
the possible expense of the European theater of action, leaving Germany to
triumph over Russia and the Allies to lose the war; Japan would have eventually
have been conquered by the Russians instead of the Americans–the list goes on
and on.
The authors (well, one of them, anyway) heartily dislike alternative history.
Such exercises tend to be biased from the outset and are often used
disingenuously to prove pet opinions, rather than to explore openly the
downstream ramifications of a given scenario. Even used honestly, they are
inherently dodgy propositions. One can think of an alternative history as being a
flow of changed events radiating forward from a given point in time. The
problem is, the further one goes beyond the immediate implications of the
changed event, the less one can predict with accuracy what might happen. That,
in turn, means that there is a time threshold before which one is (at best) engaged
in educated speculation, but after which one is simply indulging in largely
meaningless conjecture. Alternative history can’t “prove” anything–all it can do
is suggest possible outcomes. Likewise, when someone says that the effects of
the Americans losing at Midway were “incalculable,” they should be held to
exactly that level of precision. The results of such a hypothetical loss, strictly
speaking, are, by definition, incalculable, in that they cannot be pinned down
with any exactness, pro or con. Not only that, but anyone with sufficiently deep
knowledge of a given historical event can usually construct several plausible
downstream scenarios from the same event that would lead to opposite ultimate
outcomes.
For instance, had Akagi escaped her ultimately fatal attack at 1026, would
this have turned the tide of the battle in favor of the Japanese? Perhaps, but
perhaps not. One thread of argument might suggest that with one additional
flight deck, and a bit of luck, the Japanese could have “won” the battle three
carriers to two, forestalled or beaten the Americans at Guadalcanal, and thus
held off defeat until 1946. Conversely, maybe Nautilus or some other U.S.
submarine might have gotten lucky (they were certainly due) and sunk
Nagumo’s flagship sometime during the early afternoon, leading to exactly the
same historical outcome. The answer is completely unknowable.
Nevertheless, it is impossible to write a book on Midway and not consider
some of the more prominent of these hypotheses. At the very least, the question
of what would have happened to Hawaii in the event of a Japanese victory needs
to be addressed, as well as the likely strategic ramifications of a Japanese victory
vis-à-vis the Pacific war as a whole. There’s no question that the Japanese were
interested in capturing Hawaii. John Stephan’s superbly researched Hawaii
Under the Rising Sun makes it clear that the Japanese were actively investigating
such operations from the outset of hostilities and planning continued as late as
September 1942. However, the pertinent question is not whether the intention
was there or not–it clearly was–but whether the Japanese ever had the military
means to achieve their aims.
Answering this question is relatively easy. Win or lose at Midway, the
Japanese could never have taken the Hawaiian Islands under any foreseeable
circumstances. The reasons are manifold and clear-cut. By April 1942, the
Americans had 62,700 Army troops (two full infantry divisions, plus support
troops) in Hawaii, and another 8,900 air personnel.13 The U.S. Army expected
this total to reach at least 115,000 ground and air personnel in the near future.
This figure does not include the tens of thousands of U.S. Navy personnel
located at Pearl Harbor. Thus, even had the Japanese followed up a victory at
Midway in short order with an attack on Hawaii, they would have had to contend
with a Hawaiian garrison of at least 100,000–150,000 U.S. servicemen. These
American troops were primarily located on Oahu, which was small enough to
defend in depth but big enough to maneuver on, making it an enormously
difficult nut to crack.
The Japanese themselves thought that capturing such a stronghold would
require at least three infantry divisions, or roughly 45,000 troops.14 This was
certainly a parsimonious number of troops to commit to such an undertaking,
but, even so, it represented an invasion force ten times larger than the one they
had planned to employ at Midway and three times larger than they had ever
amphibiously landed at one time. It is doubtful that Japan had the sealift capacity
to contemplate such an undertaking across nearly 4,000 miles of open water in
any case. Nor is it likely that even if the Japanese had been so lucky as to have
captured the islands, that they would subsequently have been able to keep their
troops in supply, let alone the civilian population.
Even if sufficient transport could have been found, a Japanese assault force
would have landed in the face of withering American fire, without much in the
way of specialized equipment, and without an effective naval gunfire or air-
support doctrine. In the unlikely event that Japanese troops managed to gain
some kind of foothold, given the size of Oahu and the depth of the American
defenses, there could be none of the bold flanking movements that the Imperial
Army had used to such great effect in Malaya. Hawaii would most likely have to
be taken frontally. Considering the heavy losses the Japanese had suffered
attempting a similar landing on Wake at the beginning of the war, not to mention
the appalling slaughter that American Marines would inflict on the Japanese in
similar circumstances at Guadalcanal just two months later,15 the conclusion
seems inescapable that a Japanese landing on Oahu would have resulted in a
bloodbath worthy of the Somme. Granted, the Japanese were hardly squeamish
over taking such losses, but it is difficult to see how such an invasion could have
succeeded.
Furthermore, the Japanese would have to secure air superiority over Hawaii
with carrier assets alone–their land-based aircraft at Midway, over a thousand
miles away, could play no real role in such an invasion. Yet, unlike the carrier
task forces the Americans would go on to employ in 1944, even at the height of
its powers Kid Butai never had the ability to stand off an enemy’s island
bastion for weeks on end and beat it into submission. In the first place, Kid
Butai couldn’t bring a sufficient number of aircraft to get the job done. By April
1942, Hawaii boasted 275 combat aircraft, a figure that had increased as the
battle at Midway had loomed. In the event of an American defeat there, Hawaii’s
air force could have been augmented still further by naval aircraft shuttled in
from Saratoga or Wasp, much as the Americans went on to do at Guadalcanal.
This meant that Kid Butai, even with all six carriers available, would have
fought against Hawaii from a position of numerical parity at best. But more
important, the logistics for a sustained Japanese carrier presence off the shores of
Hawaii simply weren’t there. Kid Butai could mount raids, but it could not
project sustained power ashore. This meant that Japanese ground forces, even if
they managed to stay ashore, would probably lack consistent air cover while
trying to conduct offensive operations–not a good recipe for ultimate success.
It is true that if the Hawaiian Islands couldn’t be captured, the Japanese
might have tried blockading them instead, using a combination of submarines
and surface forces. But Japanese doctrine looked down on commerce raiding,
and as a result, their subs never proved as effective in this role as they might
have been. For their part, Japanese surface forces couldn’t hope to operate in the
face of American land-based airpower without Kid Butai to support them. Yet,
the presence of Japanese carriers in the area would have necessarily been
sporadic. Even in the face of a concerted blockade, it is almost impossible to
imagine the Americans being willing to sacrifice the garrison and the large
civilian population there. If maintaining the logistical flow to the islands
necessitated sustaining Murmansk-like losses in the supply convoys, so be it, but
the convoys would still have been sent. America was engaged in a total war, and
failure was not an option. Just as the British had risen to the London Blitz and
defended Malta in the Mediterranean, and the Russians had endured the
seemingly endless siege of Leningrad, so too would the Americans have been
determined to hang on to Oahu–their last outpost in the Pacific. The only logical
conclusion one can reach from all this is that Hawaii was largely impregnable.
Its value as an American naval base might have been diminished in the short
term. But the islands themselves most likely could never have been taken.
The wider ramifications of a Japanese victory at Midway are less easy to
gauge. It is certainly true that the American counteroffensive at Guadalcanal
would never have been launched under such circumstances. Australia and New
Guinea would likewise have been in greater danger as a result of America’s
inability to forestall continued Japanese incursions. Barring the successful
occupation of Hawaii, the Japanese certainly would have moved into the South
Pacific largely unimpeded, occupying the New Hebrides, Fiji, Samoa, and
Tonga. It is possible that they would have contemplated landings in Northern
Australia as well. In the short term, then, the Allied position in this area of
operations would have been made much more precarious. But it is unclear
whether the Japanese really could have used the time that a victory at Midway
would have purchased to good effect.
No amount of territory that Japan captured in the South Pacific could solve
its basic strategic problems. Taking Tonga, or even Brisbane, couldn’t bring the
Americans to the negotiating table. It couldn’t forestall the inexorable
completion of the naval forces then building in America’s shipyards. Nor could
it help Japan build her own carriers any faster. One thing that the breathless
proselytizers of Midway doomsday scenarios always fail to note is that in all the
territory Japan had added to her empire since December 1941, there was not a
single production center worthy of the name. Whereas the Germans had
benefited significantly from capturing such complexes as the Skoda arms works
in Czechoslovakia, the factories around Paris and in the Rhône-Alpes region,
and the shipyards in Brest and St. Nazaire, no comparable facilities existed
anywhere in Asia. Apart from Japan and the United States, there wasn’t a single
shipyard in the Pacific capable of launching a warship larger than a destroyer.
The only decent dry dock anywhere south of Ky sh was located 2,700 miles
away, in Singapore. Thus, Japan’s conquests contributed practically nil to her
industrial capacity.
Likewise, the raw materials that Japan secured in the East Indies still had to
be transported home and turned into finished products. Not only that, but Japan’s
own industrial base had already been largely “maxed out” during the heated
military expansions of the 1930s.16 In contrast to the American economy, which
had been underutilized during much of the same time period, and thus had plenty
of unused capacity, Japan had no such “headroom” for significant growth.
Worse still, there is credible evidence to suggest that absorbing the lower per
capita GDP regions like the East Indies represented a significant hindrance to
efficiently mobilizing the Japanese economy.17 Thus, both militarily and
economically, territorial indulgences like taking the Solomons or Fiji were
ultimately futile, in that they extended the Japanese defensive perimeter for little
real gain. There was nothing in the South Pacific worth capturing from a
resource standpoint, and those garrisons would have to be manned and supplied,
thereby stretching Japan’s already-fragile logistical resources even further.
Taken as a whole, it is arguable that the Japanese sticking their necks out even
further would merely have left them that much more exposed when the
inevitable American hammer blows began in 1944.
Likewise, while invading northern Australia would have been a blow to
Allied fortunes, and would have potentially deprived them of a useful base in the
short term, in the long term it is difficult to see how such a move could have
measurably improved Japanese fortunes. In the first place, the Australians had
several superb infantry formations of their own. It is likely that they could have
held their shores against the invader, or at least inflicted very serious casualties
on them. After all, the Australians, unlike the British in Malaya, would have
been fighting for hearth and home. Second, it seems equally unlikely that the
Japanese could have occupied the entire subcontinent, meaning that Sydney,
Perth, and probably even Brisbane couldn’t have been brought effectively under
Japanese control. Third, it has to be admitted that while Australia was a useful
base for the Allied counteroffensive, it wasn’t vital in the same way that holding
Britain was for conducting operations against the continent of Europe. As the
Americans were to demonstrate in 1944 in the Central Pacific, they had the
means to punch directly through the heart of Japanese defenses and make their
way toward the Home Islands. Nothing that happened at Midway in 1942 could
change the overall parameters of that equation come 1944.
Overall, it seems clear that much of the wild speculation regarding the
possible negative effects of an American loss at Midway is unwarranted. As we
have seen, the American strategic position in the Pacific could be damaged, but
not irretrievably so, for the simple reason that Hawaii could never have been
taken away. In contrast, there’s no question that in the short term, such a defeat
would have carried heavy penalties, particularly with regard to the South Pacific
and Australia. The war might have been lengthened somewhat. But in the long
term, the Americans were in a truly unique position of strength. The U.S.
economy was already more than six times larger than that of Japan at the
outbreak, and would expand by 50 percent during the war.18 More important,
U.S. industry was essentially immune to Japanese attack. The American naval
building program could not be forestalled, meaning that Admirals Ernest King
and Chester Nimitz knew with absolute certainty that their naval power was
going to be decisively superior to that of Japan in the relatively near future.
This raises the final conundrum surrounding the true meaning of winning or
losing at Midway. Since the day the battle was fought, the American victory
there has been labeled as being “decisive.” But the foregoing analysis has shown
that, win or lose at Midway, it was extremely unlikely that the Americans were
going to lose the war in the Pacific, and it was equally unlikely that the Japanese
were going to win. How, then, can such a battle be considered decisive? As H. P.
Willmott pointed out, there is a basic contradiction in simultaneously thinking
that the Americans were bound to win the war and that the Battle of Midway
was decisive. To be decisive, Midway had to be a defeat from which the
Japanese could not recover, of the sort, for example, that the Japanese inflicted
on the Russians at Tsushima. But that was clearly not the case, Willmott notes,
given the vigorous Japanese naval actions later in 1942 around the Solomons.
Midway might also be termed “decisive” if it had completely altered the course
of the war, but that also seems untrue. If the defeat of Japan “was assured
because of the disparity of national resources, Midway was at best only a
milestone on the road that led to defeat; it was not a signpost that marked a
parting of the way, one track leading to American victory and the other in
precisely the opposite direction.” This leads back to the logical contradiction in
asserting simultaneously that Midway was a decisive battle and that American
victory was inevitable, because “the notion of an inevitable victory is
irreconcilable with that of a decisive battle.”19 If Midway merely hastened by
some months a foregone conclusion to the conflict that still lay some years in the
future, as seems to be the case, then it cannot legitimately be termed decisive.
Arguing that the outcome of the war in the Pacific was inevitable is not
suggesting that the defeat of the Axis Powers in WW II was likewise guaranteed.
Richard Overy’s superb Why the Allies Won vigorously refutes the economic
determinist stance regarding WW II, showing just how many critical hinge
points there were in that conflict. His study and others render highly dubious any
assertion that an Allied victory over the Axis as a whole was inevitable.20 This is
because the real strategic locus of the war as a whole lay not in the Pacific, but
rather in Europe generally and on the steppes of Russia in particular. Victory in
the European theater was far chancier for the Allies, given the immense
collective economic strength of Nazi Germany and her satellite assemblage of
allied and conquered territories. It would not be until Russia’s survival was
assured, in late 1942, that the war in Europe began to veer away from the brink
of disaster.
But paradoxically, within the more limited context of the Pacific war, it was
absolutely certain that the Allies (chiefly represented by the United States)
would ultimately defeat the sole Axis power in the region, Japan. The reasons
for this are twofold. The first was one of simple geography. Germany was in no
position to assist Japan militarily in any substantial sense, even if it had wanted
to. Thus, a German victory in Europe was not necessarily a guarantor of Japan’s
ultimate security. The second, more important reason was America’s enormous
advantages in productive capacity relative to that of Japan. Indeed, this basic fact
was well understood by both parties, as an exchange immediately prior to the
war between the American chief of naval operations, Adm. Harold R. Stark, and
Japan’s special ambassador to the United States, Adm. Nomura Kichisaburo
illustrates. With war clouds gathering, Stark remarked to Nomura,

If you attack us we will break your empire before we are through with
you. While you may have initial success … the time will come when you
too will have your losses, but there will be this great difference. You will
not only be unable to make up your losses but will grow weaker as time
goes on: while on the other hand we will not only make up our losses but
will grow stronger as time goes on. It is inevitable that we shall crush you
before we are through with you.21

Stark’s comments precisely foretold the long-term strategic dynamics that

would play out in the war that Japan would shortly initiate. Indeed, if anything,
he understated the case, as Japan’s ruinous, almost preindustrialized postwar
economic situation vividly demonstrated.
It is true that this “inevitable” victory might not have occurred if the
American will to victory had flagged. In light of modern defeats in places like
Vietnam, Beirut, and Mogadishu, it is fashionable these days to question whether
the American populace in WW II would have had the determination to see the
war through to a successful finish in the face of something like a Japanese
victory at Midway. However, this notion is unsupportable, being based on a
postwar mind-set that did not pertain during 1942. In the first place, drawing
parallels between defeats in Lebanon, Somalia, and Vietnam is not germane.
These were all “optional wars,” for want of a better phrase. The American public
knew that, win or lose, nothing that happened on those battlefields necessarily
affected the global security of America, or would have a dramatic impact on
their way of life. The same most certainly cannot be said of World War II. Once
France fell, Britain was attacked, and then the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, the
American public somberly grasped the fundamental magnitude and importance
of the struggle before them. The knowledge that this was total war, fought
against evils of an appalling and absolute nature, pervaded the country. It steeled
the collective resolve of the nation and prepared it for massive sacrifices of
blood and treasure in ways that are lost on generations raised during and after
Vietnam. World War II was fought by a generation that had grown up in full
knowledge of the horrendous sacrifices that had been made in World War I.
People of that era understood the level of effort that would be required–no one
was under any illusions that they were in for anything other than a long, bitter,
and bloody war. And so indeed it proved.
In the end, Midway stands as the most important battle of the Pacific war,
not because it was decisive in an absolute sense, and not because it won the war
in a day, but because of its immediate practical effects on American military
options in the Pacific. In the succinct words of the Naval War College study of
the battle, Midway “put an end to Japanese offensive action … and … [restored]
the balance of naval power in the Pacific.”22 In this modern era of unchallenged
American naval supremacy, merely restoring parity may not seem like much of
an accomplishment. But it must be recalled that Midway was fought “between
one navy at the peak of its strength and another if not at its nadir then close to
it.”23 In the dark months of 1942, being able to claw back to parity was an
enormous achievement. Thus, Midway clearly delineated where and when the
strategic momentum in the Pacific war shifted over to the Americans. The Battle
of Coral Sea had provided the first hints that the Japanese high-water mark had
been reached, but it was the Battle of Midway that put up the sign for all to see.
Midway also marked the gateway to the attritional war that would be fought in
the Solomons, a campaign that would irreparably ruin the Japanese Navy by
destroying its elite naval aviation cadres and wrecking its surface forces beyond
redemption. Midway didn’t produce these consequences by itself, but it created
the circumstances whereby the Japanese Navy would be fed into the shredder.
24

The Myths and Mythmakers of Midway

As was stated in the introduction, all great battles inevitably create their own
mythos. That is, every battle of note is comprised of a series of significant
moments that provide a framework for understanding the outcome of the battle
as a whole. They are the crucial, causative events that people look at and say,
“Oh, so this is why things turned out as they did.” Such a mythos clarifies and
simplifies actions that are invariably messy, complex, and almost
incomprehensibly violent. The present account, it is true, is a revisionist one, in
that it disputes many of the beliefs regarding the Battle of Midway that have
been in print for the last sixty years or so. It’s appropriate, then, to end by briefly
reexamining some of the conventional wisdom, and then attacking the last, and
greatest, of the misconceptions that is still attached to this battle. The issues
addressed so far include the following:

“At the time of the decisive American dive-bomber attack at 1020–

1025 on 4 June, the Japanese carriers were just minutes away from
launching a decisive counterattack against the American carriers.” This is
categorically not true and is one of the biggest fallacies in the conventional
Japanese account. At the time of the decisive attack, the Japanese were at
least a half hour away from being able to launch a strike, and few, if any,
Japanese attack planes were on deck.
“The Aleutians Operation was an elaborate feint designed to lure the
American fleet out of Pearl Harbor.” Not true. The simultaneous launch of
operations in the Aleutians was designed to capitalize on the Americans
being busy elsewhere, so that objectives in the Aleutians could be seized
without hindrance. Operation AL was an invasion in its own right,
strategically timed, and not merely a diversion.
“During the transit to Midway, Admiral Yamamoto withheld
important intelligence from Admiral Nagumo that might have changed the
course of the battle. As a result, Nagumo was in the dark concerning the
nature of the threat facing him at Midway.” Not true. While Yamamoto did
not communicate to Nagumo, there was no need to, as Kid Butai was
perfectly capable of independently receiving timely intelligence from the
First Communications Unit in Tokyo. Akagi’s intelligence estimate before
the battle reveals that Nagumo had most of the important pieces of
information already in hand. What is less clear is why he did not act on that
intelligence.
“Had the Japanese implemented a two-phase search plan on the
morning of 4 June, they would have succeeded in locating the American
fleet in time to win the battle.” Perhaps, but in 1942 the Japanese (and
Americans) had yet to incorporate the notion of a two-phase search into
their doctrine. Such a search plan was never an option, and it was
disingenuous for Fuchida Mitsuo to imply that it was.
“The late launch of cruiser Tone’s scout plane doomed Admiral
Nagumo’s efforts to win the battle.” Not true. If anything, Tone No. 4’s late
launch and subsequent improvised search route led to the discovery of the
Americans earlier than ought to have been expected. The true failures in
scouting during the battle began with the failure of Japan’s submarines to
arrive on station on time, followed by the abandonment of Operation K, and
culminated with Chikuma No. 1’s failure to locate the Americans in the
0615 time frame.
“Had Nagumo not decided to rearm his aircraft with land attack
weapons, he would have been in a position to attack the Americans as soon
as they were discovered.” Not true. The reserve strike aircraft were not
spotted on the flight deck when the Americans were detected. Given the
time required to spot the decks, Nagumo’s odds of launching an attack
before Tomonaga’s return were low at best. The ceaseless American air
attacks had destroyed any reasonable possibility of spotting the decks
before Tomonaga’s return because of the constant launch and recovery of
combat air patrol (CAP) fighters.
“The sacrifice of Torpedo Eight was not in vain, since it pulled the
Japanese CAP fighters down to sea level, thereby allowing the American
dive–bombers to attack.” Not true. VT-8’s demise happened a full hour
before the decisive attack, givingplenty of time for the CAP Zeros to resume
their correct stacking had they maintained discipline. Rather, VT-8’s
contribution was the same as VT-6’s–disrupting the counteroffensive
activities of the Japanese carriers.
“The Japanese naval air corps was all but wiped out at the Battle of
 Midway.” Not true. Japanese casualties at Midway amounted to fewer than
a quarter of the aviators embarked. Rather, it was the attritional campaign
in the Solomons that destroyed the elite corps of Japanese naval aviators.

However, the most pernicious myth concerning the Battle of Midway has
never been seriously questioned even though evidence to the contrary was
readily available. The continuance of this myth suggests that it fits conveniently
into the glorification of this, possibly the greatest U.S. naval victory of all time.
Appealing as the myth is to any historian who becomes involved in studying
Midway, its attractiveness must not outweigh a careful cross-checking of sources
and a dispassionate evaluation of the factual evidence. The myth in question is
the persistent belief that in defeating the Japanese the Americans miraculously
triumphed against “overwhelming odds.” With no disrespect intended toward the
late Walter Lord, who generously assisted the authors in the creation of this
work, the foreword to his otherwise very laudable Incredible Victory
nevertheless encapsulates this belief as eloquently as anything else in print:

By any ordinary standard, they were hopelessly outclassed. They had no

battleships, the enemy eleven. They had eight cruisers, the enemy twenty-
three. They had three carriers (one of them crippled); the enemy had eight. .
. .
They had no right to win. Yet they did, and in doing so, they changed
the course of a war. More than that, they added a new name–Midway–to
that small list that inspires men by shining example. Like Marathon, the
Armada, the Marne, a few others, Midway showed that every once in a
while “what must be” need not be at all. Even against the greatest of odds,
there is something in the human spirit–a magic blend of skill, faith and
valor–that can lift men from certain defeat to incredible victory.1
Lord certainly didn’t invent this notion. But he articulated a general postwar
attitude that has been echoed endlessly in almost every American text on the
battle until it has been accepted as holy writ. It is a conviction that has been
subtly reinforced by the very titles of the two most important English-language
histories of the battle–Miracle at Midway and Incredible Victory–and less subtly
amplified by numerous TV documentaries, by every talk given at a WW II
veteran’s group, and by hundreds of Internet discussions that have self–
referentially reinforced the notion. It has gotten so out of hand, in fact, that
historian John Lundstrom has jokingly coined a phrase to describe it–“Incredible
Victory Disease.” However, the notion that Midway was somehow a miraculous
triumph, fought in the face of crushing Japanese superiority, is a fallacy, and one
greatly in need of dispelling.2 Furthermore, it is a fallacy that can be easily
refuted at two different levels of analysis–first, by examining the opposing
forces and their operational plans during the battle, and second, by analyzing the
command decisions of the two opposing supreme commanders–Yamamoto
Isoroku and Chester Nimitz.
First, the numbers. It is quite true that in May of 1942, the Combined Fleet
enjoyed an aggregate numerical advantage over the U.S. Navy in the Pacific and
conceivably could have brought overwhelming firepower to bear anywhere in
that theater of operations. It is further true that the bulk of Combined Fleet was
indeed operating in support of Operations AL and MI on the morning of 4 June.
But the Japanese battle plan ensured that the majority of this force could not
have engaged any American units on that day. Claiming that the American
defenders at Midway somehow fought against this impressive array of warships
in toto–when the majority of the Japanese vessels participating never fired a shot
in anger, never once raised their speed of advance (or retreat) in reaction to an
impending American attack, were never even sighted by so much as an
American scout plane–is to overstate the matter egregiously.
The forces that deserve to be tallied were those present at the point of
tactical contact on the morning of 4 June and that were within a day’s steaming
distance of the island of Midway itself. By those qualifications, Nihon Kaigun
had exactly two formations worth considering–Nagumo’s First Mobile Striking
Force and Tanaka’s Invasion Force. The latter can be disregarded, as, by
definition, it was incapable of offensive action. For his part, Nagumo brought
twenty warships to face the U.S. Navy’s twenty-five. He was operating a grand
total of four aircraft carriers and 248 carrier aircraft. The Americans, between
their three carriers (none of which can be honestly described as “crippled”),
mounted a total of 233 carrier aircraft and could call upon another 120-odd
aircraft from Midway. Like the Japanese, the Americans had four airstrips from
which to operate, with the added benefit that one of theirs could not be sunk. In
other words, where it really counted, it was the Japanese who were outnumbered
in terms of both warships and aircraft, not the other way around.
Some may protest that Yamamoto’s Main Body should be included in this
equation, as well as Kurita and Kond ’s support forces, since they were also
driving on Midway. However, advocates of this line of reasoning ignore the
obvious fact that as far as Nagumo and the outcome of the battle was concerned,
those forces might as well have been on the moon. The outcome at Midway was
determined in the space of about six hours, between 0430 and 1030. By the end
of that period, the battle was fundamentally decided in favor of the Americans.
The only thing left to be seen was whether Hiry would exact some measure of
retribution before she, too, was finally caught and smashed. Nothing that
Yamamoto’s Main Body or the other support formations could do was going to
reverse that decision, because, in truth, they were in no position to support
anything. Thus, the only forces that are relevant in a discussion of who
outnumbered who were the ones in a position to have exchanged actual blows on
4 June, meaning Nagumo’s and Fletcher’s, period.
It is quite true that in comparison with Fletcher’s command, Nagumo could
muster superior gun power in the form of his two fast battleships, not to mention
the combat capability provided by the torpedoes of his destroyers and cruisers, if
it ever came to that. But of course it never really could have come to that, and
neither of these measuring sticks was at all relevant to the outcome of the battle.
Admirals Fletcher and Spruance had no interest in becoming embroiled in a
surface fight and maneuvered their forces carefully so as to avoid any chance of
such entanglements. Thus, Nagumo could never salvage victory from defeat by
using his superiorities in, say, night fighting. A surface battle could only build on
the success that his aircraft brought him–it could never replace them. It was
aircraft and flight decks that were the true index of victory or defeat, and it is
clear that the Japanese enjoyed no numerical advantage in this respect.
To be sure, it is also true that in several key qualitative areas such as aircraft
performance (at least in terms of fighters and torpedo aircraft), pilot experience,
and the ability to mass the offensive firepower of their carrier air groups,
Nagumo possessed distinct advantages. Their importance should not be
discounted, as shown by the effectiveness of Hiry s strikes against Yorktown
with a relatively small number of planes and with no advantage of surprise.
Thus, a real understanding of the battle requires weighing the strengths and
weaknesses of both forces, and, hopefully, this study has indicated the intricate
matrix of qualitative factors, doctrinal subtleties, planning shortcomings, and
sheer good and bad fortune that played into the final outcome of the battle. Too
often, however, the casual reader of popular history prefers to ignore such
subtleties and to focus instead on simplistic numbers and catch phrases like
“overwhelming odds.” They paint for themselves a mental picture of veritable
hordes of Japanese being fended off by a ragtag (but plucky) band of hideously
outnumbered Americans. While serious studies of the battle have provided a
more nuanced picture, they have not been as direct as they might in disparaging
this chauvinistic, overly simplified view.
The myth of supposedly overwhelming Japanese force runs into further
problems, because it contradicts other popularly held notions about Midway,
such as the perceived incompetence of Admiral Yamamoto. Some Western
observers have argued for Japan’s stunning numerical advantages while
simultaneously attacking Yamamoto’s unwise dispersal of his assets. Yet, if
Nagumo’s defeat was truly as miraculous as these same writers would have us
believe, then Yamamoto can hardly be faulted for dispersing his forces after first
equipping his subordinate Nagumo with such a wealth of military force that,
apparently, only an act of God was sufficient to defeat it. The inconsistency is
obvious: either Yamamoto did not provide sufficient forces to Nagumo (and the
odds were thereby considerably less in Japan’s favor than the popular wisdom
would have us believe) or Yamamoto’s battle plan wasn’t as deeply flawed as it
has been made out to be. Both positions cannot be true. The view argued here
has been that Yamamoto’s battle plan was indeed badly flawed, in that it
assumed that the Americans were mentally beaten, and that stealth and deception
were therefore to be prized above sufficiency of force at the point of contact. In
hindsight, Nagumo’s force was clearly inadequate for the task at hand. It should
never have left port without one, and preferably both, of CarDiv 5’s carriers. To
do otherwise was to cut the margin of sufficiency too fine, as was disastrously
demonstrated. Indeed, the real miracle of Midway (from the American point of
view) may well have been Yamamoto’s failure to provide Nagumo with
sufficient forces to guarantee victory in battle, given that he might readily have
done so.
Even greater problems occur when those who hew to the myth evaluate the
performance of Admiral Chester Nimitz. If one believes in the notion of
overwhelming Japanese superiority, then Nimitz’s decision to engage the enemy
and accept the horrific odds against him must be judged reckless in the extreme.
Nothing less can explain his willingness to walk clear-eyed into a fight, pitting
his allegedly pathetic force against the Japanese juggernaut to contest a speck of
land that was entirely disposable and that could be isolated and recaptured at any
time. However, we take the view that Nimitz was an exceptional commander
who had a finer appreciation of the odds facing him than many commentators do
sixty years after the battle. Based on estimates of four to five Japanese carriers,
he was within his rights to suppose that his forces, if positioned correctly, could
carry the day. It is true that the actual day’s events were a nearer run than Nimitz
would have wished, but that is largely the result of poor decisions by American
commanders further down the chain of command and to a lack of experience in
conducting multicarrier operations. The critical American failing of the
morning–the dissipation of their attacking air formations–was beyond Nimitz’s
control. Had the bulk of the American carrier aircraft, including Hornet’s, been
able to arrive simultaneously in the area of Kid Butai and delivered a
coordinated attack, the entire Japanese force might well have been knocked out
in a single blow. Indeed, any American carrier task force in 1944–when the U.S.
Navy was at the top of its game–would probably have done so as a matter of
course.
The unglamorous truth is that the U.S. Navy, at an operational level, fought
much of the morning of 4 June suboptimally in terms of scouting, flight deck
operations, and coordinated delivery of firepower. In the process, they dug
themselves into such a hole that success could only be bought at the cost of
many aviators’ lives. Managing to prevail despite those mistakes was a testament
to the skill and courage of the Americans. But in a wider view, it cannot be taken
as some kind of miracle that three American carriers were able to prevail against
four of Japan’s. As far as Nimitz’s reputation is concerned, his forces’
operational performance should not reflect on his overall strategic calculus,
which was fundamentally solid. Nimitz knew that the odds he faced were worth
accepting. Even had he lost the contest, his initial decision to offer battle–on the
basis of superior military intelligence, rough parity of airpower, and with the
advantage of surprise–would have been no less sound.
On balance, it would be wisest to avoid entirely words like “miraculous” or
“incredible” when describing this brilliantly conceived, hard-fought, but rather
evenly matched American victory. “Glorious” it most certainly was;
“miraculous” it clearly was not. The battle provides an ample amount of
excitement, given the real power of the Japanese forces, the crucial American
mistakes that might have cost them their triumph, and the heroism exhibited on
both sides, with no need to exaggerate for chauvinistic satisfaction the odds the
Americans faced.
It is ironic, of course, that one of the primary figures responsible for
erecting the prevailing American mythos of the Battle of Midway is Japanese. It
should be clear that the account put forward here differs radically from Fuchida
Mitsuo’s influential book Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan. In fact, in
many ways Fuchida’s work was the catalyst for creating this one, as it became
increasingly apparent that crucial details he supplied were contradicted by a
variety of authoritative sources. At the same time, a sweeping critique of
Fuchida was not to be undertaken lightly, given that he is arguably the single
most important translated Japanese source on the battle. Likewise, calling his
credibility into question also calls into question key elements in the accepted
Western account. But the very fact that particulars drawn from Fuchida formed
the core of the “Japanese side” of that account made it vital to check his
operational details thoroughly, and it is clear in retrospect that previous Western
historians failed to do so.
 It is relatively easy to see why this appraisal never took place. In the first
place, Fuchida’s status as a premier carrier aviator bolstered his credibility from
the first. Even during his initial interviews in 1946 for the United States Strategic
Bombing Survey (which are an important touch point for any work dealing with
Pacific war history), his American interrogators noted that Fuchida “answered
questions frankly and carefully. He was considered one of the most lucrative
sources of information and a reliable witness.” There were many things to
recommend Fuchida to a Western audience. He was charming, intelligent, and
articulate. He also gained authority thanks to a gift for self-promotion. He
subsequently became great friends with Gordon Prange, author of the
phenomenally successful Miracle at Midway, and it is likely that this friendship
precluded Prange’s questioning Fuchida too closely. Not only that, but few
Westerners in the 1960s and 1970s were in any position to critique Japanese
carrier operations. Perhaps the only individuals capable of doing so were the
U.S. naval officers charged with preparing the USSBS and ATIG reports
immediately after the war,3 particularly the latter, since they were tasked with
probing Japanese carrier operational technique. Yet, their knowledge was
apparently not applied to the study of any specific battle, and since that time the
ATIG accounts have lain largely forgotten by historians.
Japan was similarly devoid of critics, at least initially. When Fuchida and
Okumiya’s book was first published in 1951, Japan was emerging from the
initial phase of U.S. occupation, which was accompanied by strict censorship.
The Japanese military had been utterly disgraced. Former officers were in no
hurry to talk about their wartime experiences. When the first censorship bans
were lifted, however, Fuchida moved quickly to get his version of the story out.
Roger Pineau, a former U.S. intelligence officer during the war, seized on
Fuchida’s manuscript in 1953 as a tremendous addition to the Western literature.
Midway was rightly seen as the critical battle in the Pacific, and there was no
question that a man of Fuchida’s stature would have an important viewpoint on
it. As one of Japan’s foremost carrier aviators, the man who had led the attack on
Pearl Harbor, and as Carrier Division 1’s air group commander, Fuchida clearly
had access to information from Nagumo’s inner circle. In the absence of a
detailed account from Genda at this time, and the deaths of Yamamoto, Nagumo,
and Yamaguchi during the war, Fuchida (along with Admiral Kusaka) was one
of only a handful of senior officers likely to be privy to the command decisions
of the day. He would certainly seem to be the ideal chronicler of the attack on
Kid Butai on 4 June. Along with the USSBS interviews and the Nagumo
Report, Fuchida’s book became one of the three cornerstones of the Japanese-
English account on the battle, and it was woven deeply into the major Western
histories.
Unfortunately, it is clear in retrospect that Fuchida was not a faithful
narrator. Indeed, our own work spends much of its time correcting the errors
Fuchida introduced into the record. Given all this, one is left to ponder two
things. First, was Fuchida merely a poor observer, or did he willingly alter the
historic record? And if he did, why did he fabricate such a tale?
The first point is relatively easy to answer–Fuchida Mitsuo did not tell the
truth. Unquestionably, it is harsh to use the blunt word “lie” to characterize the
statements of an eyewitness, but his distortions of the events are so numerous
and so critical to the overall understanding of what happened that the term is
completely justified. For example, Fuchida claimed Nagumo lacked critical
information on the eve of the battle, when, as was shown in chapter 6, Kid
Butai’s communication procedures were clearly giving Nagumo timely access to
intelligence data and also informed him of the failure of Operation K to
reconnoiter Pearl Harbor. In the same vein, Fuchida faulted Genda for not using
a two-phase aerial search plan, even though such doctrine was not introduced
until 1943. These incorrect details, in turn, alter the calculation of where blame
should lie for any errors committed. Some of Fuchida’s misstatements deal with
seemingly minor things, like how quickly and easily the Japanese could land
their air groups on carriers. Yet, it becomes apparent that such details, in turn,
can cause a critical misevaluation of the timing of aircraft operations. And, of
course, his most blatant untruth concerned the state of the Japanese flight decks
immediately before the decisive American attack at 1020-1027 on 4 June. This
last point is not trivial, as Fuchida’s deliberate distortion of the details
surrounding this crucial event led to the rapid obscuring of contrary evidence,
such as postwar interviews with other Japanese officers who plainly stated that
armed and fueled aircraft were in the hangars when Akagi, Kaga, and S ry
were struck, not on deck. Furthermore, recent scholarship has shown that
Fuchida lied not only about the Battle of Midway, but also about Nagumo’s
apparent unwillingness to launch a follow-up strike at Pearl Harbor.4 Fuchida
must be judged as any other participant in battle would be. An occasional error
in observation is forgivable. But Fuchida’s account reveals a pattern of
distortions and outright falsehoods that alter the picture of the battle in critical
ways. They also have the effect of making Fuchida look better at the expense of
his colleagues. These aren’t accidents–they are the marks of a man with an
agenda.
There are several good reasons for his behavior. The first pertains to
Combined Fleet and First Air Fleet staff immediately after Midway. Despite
Admiral Yamamoto’s statement that he alone was to blame for the catastrophe, it
seems unavoidable that Admiral Nagumo and his staff would have had some
explaining to do upon their return. Fuchida, though not directly in the chain of
command, would certainly have been part of the group under scrutiny, along
with Admiral Kusaka and Commander Genda. The mental anguish can only be
imagined that these individuals must have experienced as the Main Body made
its way back to Japan after the devastating defeat.
As Paul Dull noted in his study of the Japanese Navy, the phrase “Ko
narimashita”–“It happened this way”–is more socially acceptable to the
Japanese than “Ko shimashita”–“I (or some other man or men) did it this way.”
To say otherwise is to offend the Japanese sensibility and its sense of history.5
Taken in this light, an explanation to Naval General Headquarters by Kid
Butai’s officers that went roughly along the lines of “We were within minutes of
launching the strike that would destroy the enemy, but then the fates of war
intervened” was probably a fairly palatable tale. Whether this rendition of events
was concocted as a group, devised by Fuchida alone, or was simply the result of
some unspoken understanding between Nagumo and his senior officers is
impossible to know. Whatever the case, it apparently played well enough at
Naval GHQ that it served its purposes.
A “fates of war” account (for want of a better name) matched the generally
known facts closely enough that no one at Naval GHQ was going to know
anything different, at least in the short term.6 Not only that, but it was certainly
much more agreeable than the unalloyed truth of the matter, which was,
“Because of the Navy’s (i.e., Admiral Nagano’s and Naval GHQ’s) utter
inability to conceive of a way to bring the war to closure, a badly flawed
operational scheme was created by the chief of Combined Fleet (Admiral
Yamamoto) that attempted to be a substitute for truly strategic-level thinking. As
a result of this plan, the commander on the scene (Admiral Nagumo) was
inevitably placed in a position where he and his men (Admiral Yamaguchi,
Kusaka, and Genda) committed irretrievable operational blunders. This, in
conjunction with an ill-conceived response to the sudden appearance of
American forces, resulted in the needless loss of irreplaceable national assets.”
Indictments of the entire upper echelon of the Navy were evidently not welcome
at this point in the war. Indeed, throughout the war the Japanese Navy (and
Army as well) demonstrated a remarkable inability to ask tough questions and
learn from its mistakes. This tendency was further reinforced by the strong sense
of in-group loyalty displayed by members of the Navy’s officer corps toward
one another. In the face of unwelcome circumstances, this loyalty often took on
the form of a code of silence among the ranks of Etajima graduates.7 It is not
surprising, therefore, that a “fates of war” explanation was generally acceptable
within the Navy.
This organizational failing becomes more understandable when placed
within the context of Japan’s gothically dysfunctional wartime leadership. It
must be recalled that even in the best of times, the Navy’s relationship with the
Imperial Army was strained. The Navy regarded those in the Army as
uneducated bumpkins, whose understanding of strategy and international
relations was abysmally plebian. The Army, for its part, regarded those in the
Navy as arrogant elitists who had been lavished with a grossly disproportionate
share of the nation’s resources. Both parties were largely correct in their mutual
assessments. By the time of Midway, far from having been improved by Japan’s
string of victories, relations between the two services had retreated into icy
formality. Indeed, it has been recounted elsewhere that when Japan’s prime
minister, General Tojo Hideki, finally learned of the calamity at Midway, far
from being horrified at what the defeat portended for the nation’s ability to
prosecute the war, his initial reaction was one of “waspish self-satisfaction that
the Navy had been defeated in an action that the army had opposed.”8
Operating on such a twisted political landscape, where rational decision
making was nearly absent from the scene, it is perhaps not surprising that the
Navy’s overriding goal was rallying itself internally and presenting a united
front to the Imperial Army, rather than learning the hard lessons the battle had to
offer. Under such pressures, it is all too easy to imagine a story being arrived at
that played to institutionally and culturally acceptable themes, while deliberately
playing down the fact that Kid Butai was unprepared to launch a counterstrike
at 1020.
After the battle, Fuchida was part of a Battle Lessons Research Committee
chartered with compiling information and presenting strategic and tactical
lessons learned from the Midway engagement. Fuchida claims that six copies of
the final report of the committee were produced, all of which were lost in the
general destruction of records that occurred after the war. Fuchida, however,
apparently rediscovered a draft manuscript of the report in his footlocker after
the armistice, and those notes formed the basis of his account.9 It’s likely that
what he had was a surviving copy of the Nagumo Report, or some work derived
from it, since a careful analysis of Fuchida’s book reveals almost no factual
details or maps not found in the Nagumo Report itself. Where he introduces
distortions and sensationalism is in the narrative accounts of events like the 1020
attack.
The circumstances under which Fuchida produced his book in 1951 also
help account for its distortions. He was writing for the Japanese lay public at a
time when the civilian mood in Japan was (rightly) extremely critical of the
military’s performance during the war. Former military officers were not held in
high esteem. In this context, it seems clear that Fuchida had an agenda, namely
reestablishing the reputation of the Navy and portraying Kid Butai in the most
favorable light. Fuchida was well within his rights for wanting to paint a positive
picture of the crack military unit he had served with, as Kid Butai was
legitimately the finest carrier force in the world at the outbreak of the Pacific war
and had performed brilliantly up until Midway. His method of doing so,
however, continued the military’s tradition of not facing up to ugly truths, as
well as preserving a code of silence around embarrassing matters. In a sense,
Fuchida’s book is a final testimony to the less-than-honest thinking that
prevailed in the Navy during the war.
Fuchida went about his task shrewdly, creating an account that paid lip
service to Japanese mistakes, while hiding key operational details. He also
benefited from a sort of “first mover” advantage by being the first account
published. In effect he dared people to call him a liar. None were willing to do so
while he was alive. Fuchida also took the opportunity to direct clever criticism
on his colleagues, while painting himself as having been more knowledgeable at
the time of the battle than he actually was. The overall picture that emerges is of
a man who wanted to be recognized as the authority on the battle, while still
carefully distancing himself from any personal responsibility for the disaster.
These strategies were relatively successful in 1953. Fuchida’s intended
audience was not terribly sophisticated in military affairs, nor was it likely to
probe the underlying details of his account. Japan’s official war histories had yet
to be written, and there was a dearth of solid material to either confirm or deny
his version of events. Most Japanese naval officers weren’t talking about the
war, a trend which regrettably resulted in the vast majority of these men taking
their accounts to the grave. Fuchida’s story was a good one, and it played well to
his intended audience. After all, Japan had just suffered an enormous national
humiliation, one particularly devastating to a society that viewed itself as
uniquely superior. Japan’s defeat could not be denied, but some sense of national
pride might be regained by revealing some moments of nobility within that
defeat. Thus, if he took a few liberties with his interpretation of events, he
probably was not outside the bounds of accepted artistic license, and he wasn’t
likely to be questioned closely about operational facts in any case.
The same was true in the West. Indeed, the very fact that Fuchida’s account
fit nicely with the prevailing American mythos surrounding the battle probably
shielded it from closer scrutiny. Fuchida’s rendition of the American dive-
bombers hurtling downward at the last second to win the day is very much in
keeping with the American view of the battle, wherein the “good guys,” through
courage, fortitude, and not a little luck, snatch victory from the very jaws of
defeat. As such, Fuchida’s story nicely bolstered the broader tenor of the
winner’s rendition of events. But it also still managed to acquit the Japanese
force with some degree of honor. All in all, his account was “good stuff”tailor-
made for a blockbuster Hollywood movie. With such an account in place, there
seemed little need to develop additional Japanese sources. As a result, the
Western record regarding the Japanese side of the battle remained essentially
unchanged for almost half a century.
The fact that Japanese carrier operations were so poorly understood in the
West didn’t help matters any. It was only with the publication of books by
authors such as David Evans, Mark Peattie, and John Lundstrom that the
technical and doctrinal details concerning the Imperial Navy’s carriers began
coming to light. Those records that had existed in English before the publication
of these works were primarily technical in nature and had not been placed within
the larger context of the Imperial Navy’s development and doctrine. As a result,
up until the 1990s, Western scholars– at least those who could not or would not
consult the Japanese sources–were in no position to be able to analyze Japanese
accounts with any accuracy.
In Japan, however, things had moved ahead. The publication of the official
Japanese war histories (Senshi Sosho) in the late 1970s inevitably called
Fuchida’s version of events into question. The Midway volume of Senshi Sosho
left no doubt that Nagumo’s counterstrike was far from being ready when the
fatal American dive-bomber attack occurred. This directly called into question
the “fateful five minutes” rendition that Fuchida had put forth, and in the eyes of
most knowledgeable observers in Japan, he was discredited. Apparently,
however, no one bothered telling the Americans this.
This fact was brought home to the authors in 2000. The authors’ suspicions
about Fuchida’s account were already taking form by then, because certain
points in his book did not mesh with accepted descriptions of Japanese carrier
deck operations. There were also discrepancies between his account and some of
those found in the Strategic Bombing Survey interviews. However, it was a
conversation between the authors and John Lundstrom that crystallized the
matter. Lundstrom had noticed, in one of those rare epiphanies when the obvious
suddenly reveals itself, that the photographs taken by American B-17s over Kid
Butai on 4 June showed completely empty flight decks on three of the Japanese
carriers at around 0800. What did that mean? To be sure, the pictures were taken
more than two hours before the American attack, but it caused Lundstrom to
pose an interesting question. Had Nagumo’s reserve strike force ever been on the
deck at any time during the battle? That question, in turn, catalyzed the authors’
efforts to develop a model that described carrier operations such as deck spotting
and rearming. This, in conjunction with the surviving Japanese carrier action
reports from the battle that detailed the launching and recovery of CAP fighters,
began raising serious doubts about the accuracy of Fuchida’s rendition of the
1020 attack.
In an effort to ascertain the validity of this approach, separate inquiries
were sent to two knowledgeable Japanese sources, politely asking for their
insights on the matter. This was done in an extremely circumspect fashion, on
the assumption that Fuchida was still held in high regard in Japan and not
wanting, as foreigners, to appear disrespectful toward a famous war hero. Given
how cautiously those inquiries were posed, the responses that came back were
startlingly blunt in their outright dismissal of Fuchida and were later echoed by
other Japanese sources as well. One summarized the matter flavorfully:

To tell why Fuchida’s book contains transparent lies, it’s necessary to

explain the background of the time it was written. Until around Showa 27
(1952), Japan’s speech and writing was under … censorship … so they
could not say what they wanted. However, since around Showa 28 (1953)
… “Cheering up” memoirs by mainly former military personnel were
rushed out… . Of course, the mental pressure of those who were truly
incompetent and responsible, and who tried to conceal their own faults,
gave strong effect as well [sic]. Fuchida’s Midway or Kusaka’s Kid Butai
that came out almost simultaneously, could be regarded as nonsense books
which were meant to conceal failures and incompetencies of such kind, and
to protect each other. If they are still among the few books available [on the
Battle of Midway] that have been translated into English, it’s a funny
story.10

Very funny indeed, as well as a cutting indictment of Western scholarship.

Fuchida’s rendition of events had, in effect, distorted the West’s study of the
battle for fifty years. True, the language barrier had played a major part in this
failure to access newer Japanese sources, but it must also be admitted that
American complacency contributed to this scholarly lethargy. Indeed, this
lethargy was such that crucial details from other sources were ignored,
apparently as being “unreliable,” because of Fuchida’s greater standing in
American historical circles. Fuchida may not have been telling the truth, but
Western scholars had only themselves to blame for having failed to access the
contemporary sources that were available in Japan and that had lain untouched
for decades.
It is to be hoped that the common wisdom surrounding the Battle of
Midway can now return to a more elastic state, wherein scholars can make new
contributions to our understanding without being held hostage by a single
account. It will be increasingly impossible for one survivor’s account to have the
same effect on the study of Midway in any case, as the veterans who fought the
battle are, sadly, declining rapidly in number. Indeed, the real decision makers at
Midway–Yamamoto, Nagumo, Genda, Kusaka, Yamaguchi–have all been dead
for years. From now on, like it or not, the study of this enormously important
battle will necessarily be based less on survivor accounts and more on the
interpretation of operational data.
The increasing importance of such data was one reason this study placed
considerable emphasis on technology and doctrine. It turned out that the
placement of airplanes in a carrier hanger, the mounting systems that secured
bombs and torpedoes to those planes, and the speed of elevator movements
yielded important information on how strikes were prepared. Similarly, the
doctrine of launching massed air strikes produced important benefits in some
situations and caused fatal delays in others. Hopefully, our approach likewise
has yielded important new perspectives and is not simply a convenient “angle”
that rehashes well-known facts in an effort to make them appear fresh.
Similarly, the discrediting of many of the commonly held beliefs
concerning the battle was the inevitable result of a careful reexamination of the
previous accounts and a determined effort to probe new information that has
become available. Our object was not to pick a fight with existing opinions in
the hope of creating controversy. Rather, it was done in hopes of establishing a
firmer foundation for future studies of the battle–a foundation robust enough not
to be held hostage by any one account or source. By adding newer tools into the
mix–computer-aided reconstructions, marine forensics, and naval architecture
among others–this study seeks a broader, more fully integrated approach than
prior histories of the battle.
Without question, elements of this account will be modified and
reinterpreted in the future, perhaps drastically. This process will doubtless
accelerate as optical scanning and computer-aided translation technologies begin
eradicating the language barriers that have plagued the study of the Pacific war.
Such revisions are only to be expected–indeed, they are to be welcomed. It is
only by constantly endeavoring to dig more deeply that a closer approximation
of the truth can be achieved. The Battle of Midway, and the legacy of the brave
men of both countries who fought and died there, deserves no less.
Glossary of Terms

The following terminology is used with regards to carrier and naval aviation
operations.

Barrier–Crash barrier; a wire barrier designed to catch aircraft that have
missed normal arrest before they crash into any aircraft stowed
forward on the flight deck
BatDiv–Battleship Division, typically a group of two to four ships
Buntaich –Division leader
CAP–“Combat Air Patrol”; the standing patrol of fighter aircraft over a task
force
CarDiv–Carrier Division, typically a group of two or three carriers
Chakkan shid t –carrier landing light array; a visual landing aid
Ch tai–Air group division; six or nine aircraft
CIC–Combat Information Center; central location for gathering and
coordinating air search (radar) and CAP fighter vectoring operations
CruDiv–Cruiser Division, typically a group of two to four ships
Dai-ichi–Number One, First
Dai-ni–Number Two; Second
DesDiv–Destroyer Division, typically composed of four ships
DesRon–Destroyer Squadron, typically a group of several divisions
Hik ch –Carrier air officer (responsible for deck activities and CAP
direction)
Hik kitai–Carrier air group
Hik taich –Commander of the carrier air group
Hinomaru–Large rising sun symbol painted on the forward flight deck of
the Japanese aircraft carriers at Midway
HYPO–American code-breaking radio intercept unit
Kanbaku–Abbreviation for kanj bakugekiki, a carrier dive-bomber
Kanch –Ship’s captain
Kank –Abbreviation for kanj k gekiki, a carrier attack bomber
Kansen–Abbreviation for kanj sent ki, a carrier fighter
Kid Butai–Mobile Force, sometimes rendered Strike Force; the
operational designation for a Japanese carrier task force
Kikaich –Head of machinery; engineering chief
K k Sentai–Carrier Division
K shaki–Fire-control director
Mantelet–A protective covering composed of rolled hammocks, designed to
keep splinters from vital command spaces, such as the island of an
aircraft carrier
Nikuhaku-hitch –“Press closely, strike home”; the motto of Japanese
torpedo tactics
PBY–American amphibious patrol plane
Plane Guard–A destroyer stationed ahead of the carrier during takeoff and
aft of the carrier during landings, charged with rescuing aircraft
crews
Reng Kantai–Combined Fleet; the entirety of Japan’s operational wartime
fleets.
Renzoku sh y –Continuous stowage technique for carrier landings
SBD–American dive-bomber
Seibich –Chief maintenance officer
Seibiin–Crew chief
Sh –Hik ch –Assistant to the air officer
Shotai–Air group section; three aircraft
Sh taich –Section leader
TBD–American torpedo plane
TBF–American torpedo plane
T j in–Ship’s crew
Tokaki–Ordnance mounting bracket
Tokkogata–“Special type”; the name used for Japanese destroyers
Tonbo-tsuri–“Dragonfly-fishing”; the rescue of aircraft crewmen from an
aircraft that suffered a mishap during takeoff. Usually accomplished
by the carrier’s plane guard destroyer.
Type 91 torpedo–Japanese standard aerial torpedo
Type 93 torpedo–Japanese standard shipborne torpedo
VB–Bombing Squadron. Usually referred to by its numerical squadron
number, that is, either “VB–6” or “Bombing Six”
VF–Fighter Squadron. Usually referred to by its numerical squadron
number, that is, either “VF–3” or “Fighting Three”
VS–Scouting Squadron. Usually referred to by its numerical squadron
number, that is, either “VS–6” or “Scouting Six”
VT–Torpedo Squadron. Usually referred to by its numerical squadron
number, that is, either “VT-8” or “Torpedo Eight”
Wire-landing wire; arresting wire. Hydraulically or electrically tensioned
cable designed to rapidly decelerate a landing aircraft
“Zengun totsugeki!”–“All forces attack!”
Appendix 1: List of Personnel

The following list of personnel that appear in the narrative is provided as a
quick reference guide to the many individuals involved in the battle.

Abe, RADM Hiroaki–commander, Cruiser Division 8
Abe, Capt. Toshio–commander, Destroyer Division 10
Abe, Lt. Zenji– Juny dive-bomber group leader
Adams, Lt. Samuel– Yorktown SBD pilot, VB[S]-5
Ady, Lt. Howard P.–PBY pilot, VP-23
Aimune, Cdr. Kunize– Hiry chief engineer
Akiyama, Ens.–Akagi engineering crewman
Amagai, Cdr. Takahisa–Kaga air officer
Amari, PO1c Hiroshi–commander, Tone No. 4 aircraft
Aoki, Capt. Taijiro–commander, carrier Akagi
Ariga, Capt. Kosaku–commander, DesDiv 4
Arima, Cdr. Takayasu–staff officer, submarines, Combined Fleet
Arimura, WO Yoshikazu–Hiry bomber maintenance chief
Best, Lt. Richard H.–commander, VB-6
Blakey, Maj. George–USAAF B-17 unit commander
Brockman, Lt. Cdr. William H.–commander, submarine Nautilus
Browning, Capt. Miles R.–Admiral Spruance’s chief of staff
Buckmaster, Capt. Elliott–commander, carrier Yorktown
Chase, Lt. William E.–PBY pilot, VP-23
Dobashi, Cdr. ?–Akagi damage-control officer
Egusa, Cdr. Takashige–S ry dive-bomber leader, hikotaicho
Ely, Lt. Arthur–executive officer, VT-6
Fleming, Capt. Richard E.–Marine dive-bomber unit commander, VMSB-
241
Fletcher, RADM Frank Jack–commander, Task Force 17, and of American
carrier striking force.
Fuchida, Cdr. Mitsuo–Akagi torpedo bomber group leader, hik taich
Fujita, Cdr. Isamu–commander, Makigumo
Fujita, Lt. Iyozo–S ry Zero pilot
Fujita, RADM Ry taro–commander, Seaplane Tender Group
Fukudome, RADM Shigeru–head of the Plans Division, Naval GHQ
Gallaher, Lt. Wilmer Earl–commander, VS-6
Genda, Cdr. Minoru–staff air officer, First Air Fleet
Gray, Lt. Richard–commander, VF-8
Halsey, VADM William F. Jr.–senior American carrier admiral, on medical
leave during the Battle of Midway
Hara, RADM Ch ichi–commander, CarDiv 5
Harada, PO1c Kaname–S ry Zero pilot
Hashimoto, Lt. Toshio–unit commander, Hiry torpedo bomber group
Henderson, Maj. Lofton R.–commander, VMSB-241
Horita, Kazuaki–S ry engineering crewman
Hosogaya, VADM Moshir –commander, Fifth Fleet
Ibusuki, Lt. Masanobu–Akagi Zero pilot
Ichiki, Col. Kiyonao–commander, Imperial Army’s Midway Invasion Force
Iida, PO1c Masatada–S ry D4Y pilot
Inoue, VADM Shigeyoshi–commander, Fourth Fleet
Ishikawa, Kenichi–Mikuma sailor
Ito, Capt. Seiroku–CarDiv 2 chief of staff
Iura, Cdr. Sh jir –staff officer, submarines, Naval GHQ
Kaku, Capt. Tomeo–commander, carrier Hiry
Kakuta, RADM Kakuji–commander, Second Mobile Striking Force
Kami, Capt. Shigenori–staff officer, Plans Division, Naval GHQ
Kanao, Cdr. Ry ichi–S ry chief gunnery officer
Kaneko, Lt. Tadashi–6th K fighter group leader
Kanoe, Cdr. Takashi–Hiry executive officer
Katsumi, Cdr. Motoi–commander, destroyer Tanikaze
Kawaguchi, Cdr. Susumu–Hiry air officer (hik ch )
Kimura, RADM Susumu–commander, Destroyer Squadron 10
King, Adm. Ernest J.–commander in chief, United States Navy
Kobayashi, Lt. Michio–Hiry dive-bomber group leader
Koga, PO Tadayoshi–Ry j Zero pilot
Komatsu, VADM Marquis Teruhisa–commander, Sixth Fleet (submarines)
Komura, Capt. Keiz –commander, cruiser Chikuma
Kond , VADM Nobutake–commander, Midway Invasion Force Main
Body
Kond , WO Isamu–S ry D4Y commander
Koyama, Lt. Masao–Mikuma gunnery officer
Kunisada, Lt. Yoshio–Kaga damage–control officer
Kurita, VADM Takeo–commander, Midway Close Support Group
Kuroda, Lt. Makoto–Chikuma air officer (hik ch )
Kuroshima, Capt. Kameto–Combined Fleet staff officer, in charge of
operations
Kusaka, RADM Ry nosuke–chief of staff, First Air Fleet
Kusumoto, Cdr. Ikuto–S ry air offificer (hik ch )
Kyuma, Lt. Cdr. Takeo–CarDiv 2 staff engineering officer
Leslie, Lt. Cdr. Maxwell “Max” Franklin–commander, VB-3
Lindsey, Lt. Cdr. Eugene Elbert “Gene”–commander, VT-6
Maeda, WO Takeshi–Kaga torpedo bomber pilot
Makishima, Teiuchi–civilian cameraman on board Akagi
Mandai, Ens. Hisao–Hiry engineering officer
Massey, Lt. Cdr. Lance Edward “Lem”–commander, VT-3
Masuda, Cdr. Shogo–Akagi air officer (hik ch )
McClusky, Lt. Cdr. Clarence Wade, Jr.–commander, Enterprise Air Group
(CEAG)
Mitoya, Lt. Cdr. Sesu–Kaga communications officer
Mitscher, Capt. Marc A.–commander, carrier Hornet
Miura, Cdr. Gishiro–Akagi navigator
Miwa, Capt. Yoshitake–staff officer, Combined Fleet
Miyo, Cdr. Tatsukichi–staff officer, Plans Division, Naval GHQ
Mori, PO2c Juzo–S ry torpedo bomber pilot
Morinaga, WO Takayoshi–Kaga Type 97 pilot
Murata, Lt. Cdr. Shigeharu–commander, Akagi torpedo bomber group
Murphy, Lt. Cdr. John–commander, submarine Tambor
Murray, Capt. George–commander, carrier Enterprise
Nagano, Adm. Osami–commander, First Section (Planning) of the Naval
General Staff
Naganuma, Lt. Michitar –S ry engineering officer
Nagayasu, Lt. Yasukuni–Hiry gunnery officer
Nagumo, VADM Ch ichi–commander, First Mobile Striking Force (Kid
Butai)
Nakagawa, WO Shizuo–Hiry dive-bomber pilot
Nimitz, Adm. Chester W.–commander in chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet
Nishibayashi, Lt. Cdr. ?–First Air Fleet flag secretary
Nishimura, RADM Sh ji–screen commander, Invasion Force Main Body
Norris, Maj. Benjamin–Marine dive-bomber unit commander, briefly
commander VMSB-241
Oda, ?–communications personnel, Kaga
Ogawa, Lt. Shoichi–commander, Kaga dive-bomber group
Ohara, Cdr. Hisashi–S ry executive officer
ishi, Capt. Tomatsu–senior staff member, First Air Fleet
Okada, Capt. Jisaku–commander, carrier Kaga
Okumiya, Lt. Cdr. Masatake–staff officer, Second Mobile Striking Force
Ono, Lt. Cdr. Kenjiro–First Air Fleet staff intelligence officer
Ono, WO Zenji–Akagi Zero pilot
Osmus, Ens. Wesley F.–TBD pilot, VT-3
ta, Capt. Minoru–commander, Midway naval landing force
Ozawa, VADM Jisabur –noted carrier aviation advocate, instrumental in
establishing First Air Fleet
Ring, Cdr. Stanhope C.–commander, Hornet Air Group (CHAG)
Rodee, Cdr. Walter F.–commander, VS-8
Sakiyama, Capt. Shakao–commander, cruiser Mikuma
Saruwatari, Lt. Cdr. Masayushi–chief damage–control officer, Mogami
Sasaki, Cdr. Akira–Combined Fleet staff officer
Shiga, Lt. Yoshio–commander, Juny fighter group, hik taich
Shannon, Col. Harold D.–commander, Marine Sixth Defense Battalion
Shigematsu, Lt. Yasuhiro –Hiry Zero pilot
Shirane, Lt. Ayao–Akagi Zero pilot
Short, Lt. Wallace “Wally”–commander, Yorktown VB[S]-5
Shumway, Lt. DeWitt Wood–Dive-bomber pilot, Yorktown, VB-3
Simard, Capt. Cyril T.–commander, NAS Midway
Soji, Capt. Akira–commander, cruiser Mogami
Spruance, RADM Raymond A.–commander, Task Force 16
Sugiyama, Gen. Gen–Head of the Imperial Army General Staff
Sweeney, Lt. Col. Walter C.–USAAF B-17 unit commander
Takagi, VADM Takeo–commander, carrier striking force at the Battle of
Coral Sea
Takashima, Cdr. Hideo–executive officer, cruiser Mikuma
Takasu, VADM Shir –commander, Aleutians Screening Force
Takezaki, PO1c Masatake–pilot, Chikumd’s No. 5 aircraft
Tampo, Cdr. Yoshibumi–chief engineer, Akagi
Tanabe, Lt. Cdr. Yahachi–commander, submarine 1–168
Tanaka, RADM Raizo–commander, Midway Invasion Force
Tanaka, Lt. Gen. Shinichi–head of operations, Imperial Army General Staff
Thach, Lt. Cdr. John Smith “Jimmy”–commander, VF-3
Tojo, Gen. Hideki–prime minister of Japan
Tomioka, Capt. Sadatoshi–staff officer, Plans Division, Naval GHQ
Tomonaga, Lt. Joichi–commander, Hiry torpedo bomber group, hik taich
Toyoshima, Cdr. Shunichi–commander, destroyer Isokaze
Ugaki, RADM Matome–chief of staff, Combined Fleet
Waldron, Lt. Cdr. John–commander, VT-8
Ware, Lt. Charles R. –division leader, VS-6
Watanabe, Capt. Yasuji–staff officer, Combined Fleet
Yamada, Lt. Shohei–commander, Akagi dive-bomber group
Yamagami, Lt. Masayuki–commander, Ry j torpedo bomber group
Yamaguchi, RADM Tamon–commander, Second Carrier Division
Yamamoto, Adm. Isoroku–commander in chief, Combined Fleet
Yamamoto, Cdr. Yuji–staff officer, Plans Division, Naval GHQ
Yamamoto, PO1c Akira–Kaga Zero pilot
Yamashita, Lt. Michiji–executive officer, Hiry dive-bomber group
Yamazaki, RADM Shigeaki–commander, Aleutians submarine force
Yanagimoto, Capt. Ryusaku–commander, carrier S ry
Yoshida, Katsuichi–Mikuma sailor
Yoshioka, Chuichi–First Air Fleet assistant air officer, compiler of the
Nagumo Report
Yoshino, WO Haruo–Kaga torpedo plane commander
Appendix 2: Japanese Order of Battle

This appendix contains an updated order of battle that corrects many errors
of naming found in previous accounts. It also details more precisely the number
of aircraft involved in the battle.

THE MIDWAY OPERATION (MI)

First Carrier Striking Force

VADM Nagumo Ch ichi
Chief of staff: RADM Kusaka Ryunosuke

Carrier Division 1-VADM Nagumo

Akagi (flagship)
Personnel:
Captain Aoki Taijir
Air officer: Cdr. Masuda Shogo
Air unit commander: Cdr. Fuchida Mitsuo
Aircraft:
18 A6M2 carrier fighters (Lt. Cdr. Itaya Shigeru)
18 D3A1 carrier bombers (Lt. Cdr. Chihaya Takehiko)
18 B5N2 carrier attack aircraft (Lt. Cdr. Murata Shigeharu)
6 A6M2 fighters (6th Air Group)
Kaga
Personnel:
Captain Okada Jisaku† (posthumously promoted to rear admiral)
Air officer: Cdr. Amagai Takahisa
Air unit commander: Lt. Cdr. Kusumi Tadashi† (posthumously promoted to
commander)
Aircraft:
18 A6M2 carrier fighters (Lt. Sato Masao)
 18 D3A1 carrier bombers (Lt. Ogawa Sh ichi† )
27 B5N2 carrier attack aircraft (Lt. Kitajima Ichir )
9 A6M2 carrier fighters (6th Air Group)
2 D3A1 carrier bombers (cargo-S ry )1

Carrier Division 2-RADM Yamaguchi Tamon† (posthumously promoted to

vice admiral)
Hiry (flagship)
Personnel:
Capt. Kaku Tomeo† (posthumously promoted to rear admiral)
Air officer: Cdr. Kawaguchi Susumu
Air unit commander: Lt. Tomonaga J ichi† (posthumously promoted to
commander)
Aircraft:
18 A6M2 carrier fighters (Lt. Mori Shigeru† )
18 D3A1 carrier bombers (Lt. Kobayashi Michio† )
18 B5N2 carrier attack aircraft (Lt. Kikuchi Rokuro† )
3 A6M2 carrier fighters (6th Air Group)
S ry
Personnel:
Capt. Yanagimoto Ryusaku† (posthumously promoted to rear admiral)
Air Officer: Cdr. Kusumoto Ikuto
Air unit commander: Lt. Cdr. Egusa Takashige
Aircraft:
18 A6M2 carrier fighters (Lt. Suganami Masaharu)
16 D3A1 carrier bombers (Lt. Ikeda Masahiro)
18 B5N2 carrier attack aircraft (Lt. Abe Heijir )
3 A6M2 carrier fighters (6th Air Group)
2 D4Y1 carrier bomber (experimental reconnaissance aircraft–one aircraft
possibly lost prior to fleet’s departure from Hashirajima)

Support Group
RADM Abe Hiroaki

Cruiser Division 8–RADM Abe

Tone–Capt. Okada Tametsugu (flagship)
Aircraft:
3 E13A1 Type 0 float reconnaissance (one likely inoperable)
 2 E8N2 Type 95 float reconnaissance
Chikuma–Capt. Komura Keiz
Aircraft:
3 E13A1 Type 0 float reconnaissance
2 E8N2 Type 95 float reconnaissance
Battleship Division 3 (Section 2)-RADM Takama Tamotsu
Haruna–RADM Takama (flagship)
Aircraft:
3 E8N2 Type 95 float reconnaissance
Kirishima–Capt. Iwabuchi Sanji
Aircraft:
3 E8N2 Type 95 float reconnaissance

Screen

Destroyer Squadron 10
RADM Kimura Susumu
Nagara–Capt. Naoi Toshio (flagship)
Aircraft:
1 E11A1 night reconnaissance seaplane

Destroyer Division 4–Capt. Ariga Kosaku

Nowaki–Cdr. Koga Magatar
Arashi–Cdr. Watanabe Yusumasa
Hagikaze–Cdr. Iwagami J ichi
MaikazeCdr. Nakasugi Seiji

Destroyer Division 10–Capt. Abe Toshio

Kazagumo–Cdr. Yoshida Masayoshi
Y gumo–Cdr. Semba Shigeo
Makigumo–Cdr. Fujita Isamu

Destroyer Division 17–Capt. Kitamura Masayuki

Urakaze–Cdr. Shiraishi Nagayoshi
Isokaze–Cdr. Toyoshima Shunichi
Tanikaze–Cdr. Katsumi Motoi
Hamakaze–Cdr. Orita Tsuneo

Supply Group
 Capt. Ota Masanao
Oilers:
Kyokut Maru–Capt. Oto
Shinkoku Maru
T h Maru
Nippon Maru
Kokuy Maru
Akigumo–Cdr. Soma Sh hei

Main Body
Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, commander in chief, Combined Fleet
Chief of staff: RADM Ugaki Matome
Battleship Division 1–RADM Takayanagi Gihachi
Yamato–RADM Takayanagi (flagship)
Nagato–Capt. Yano Hideo
Mutsu–RADM Kogure Gunji

Carrier Group
H sh –Capt. Umetani Kaoru
Aircraft:
8 B4Y1 carrier attack aircraft–Lt. Irikiin Yoshiaki
Y kaze–Lt. Cdr. Kajimoto Shizuka

Special Force
(carrying midget subs):
Chiy da–Capt. Harada Kaku
Nisshin–Capt. Komazawa Katsumi

Screen

Destroyer Squadron 3
RADM Hashimoto Shintar
Sendai–Capt. Morishita Nobue (flagship)

Destroyer Division 11–Capt. Sh ji Kichir

Fubuki–Lt. Cdr. Yamashita Shizuo
Shirayuki–Lt. Cdr. Sugawara Rokor
Murakumo–Lt. Cdr. Higashi Hideo
 Hatsuyuki–Lt. Cdr. Kamiura Junnari

Destroyer Division 19–Capt. Oe Ranji

Isonami–Cdr. Sugama Ry kichi
Uranami–Lt. Cdr. Hagio Tsutomu
Shikinami–Lt. Cdr. Kawahashi Akifumi
Ayanami–Cdr. Sakuma Eiji

1st Supply Unit (oilers)

Capt. Nishioka Shigeyasu
Narut –Capt. Nishioka
T ei Maru

Guard Force (Aleutians screen)

VADM Takasu Shir
Chief of staff: RADM Kobayashi Keng )

Battleship Division 2
Hy ga–Capt. Matsuda Chiaki (flagship)
Ise–Capt. Takeda Isamu
Fus –Capt. Obata Chozaemon
Yamashiro–Capt. Kogure Gunji

Screen
RADM Kishi Fukuji

Cruiser Division 9
Kitakami–Capt. Norimitsu Saiji (flagship)
i–Capt. Narita M ichi

Destroyer Division 20–Capt. Yamada Y ji

Asagiri–Lt. Cdr. Maekawa Nisabur
Yugiri–Cdr. Motokura Masayoshi
Shirakumo–Cdr. Hitomi Toyoji
Amagiri–Capt. Ashida Buichi

Destroyer Division 24–Capt. Hirai Yasuji

Umikaze–Cdr. Sugitani Nagahide
 Yamakaze–Lt. Cdr. Hamanaka Sh ichi
Kawakaze–Lt. Cdr. Wakabayashi Kazuo
Suzukaze–Lt. Cdr. Shibayama Kazuo

Destroyer Division 27–Capt. Yoshimura Matake

Ariake–Lt. Cdr. Yoshida Shoichi
Yugure–Lt. Cdr. Kamo Kiyoshi
Shigure–Cdr. Seo Noboru
Shiratsuyu–Lt. Cdr. Hashimoto Kanematsu

2nd Supply Unit (oilers)

Capt. Eguchi Matsuo
San Clemente Maru–Capt. Eguchi
T a Maru

Midway Invasion Force

VADM Kond Nobutake
Chief of staff: RADM Shiraishi Kazutaka

Main Body

Cruiser Division 4 (Section 1)

Atago–Capt. Baron Ij in Matsuji (flagship)
Chokai–Capt. Hayakawa Mikio

Cruiser Division 5–VADM Takagi Takeo

My k –Capt. Miyoshi Teruhiko
Haguro–Capt. Mori Tomokazu

Battleship Division 3 (Section 1)–RADM Mikawa Gun `ichi

Kong –Capt. Koyanagi Tomiji
Hiei–Capt. Nishida Masao

Screen

Destroyer Squadron 4
RADM Nishimura Sh ji
Yura (CL flag), Capt. Sat Shir
Destroyer Division 2–Capt. Oe Ranji
Murasame–Lt. Cdr. Suenaga Naoji
Samidare–Cdr. Matsubara Takisabur
Harusame–Lt. Cdr. Kamiyama Masao
Y dachi–Cdr. Kikkawa Kiyoshi

Destroyer Division 9–Capt. Sat Yasuo

Asagumo–Cdr. Iwahashi T ru
Minegumo–Lt. Cdr. Suzuki Yasuatsu
Natsugumo–Lt. Cdr. Tsukamoto Moritar

Carrier Group
Capt. bayashi Sueo
Zuih –Capt. Obayashi
Aircraft:2
6 A6M2, 6 A5M4-Lt. Hidaka Moriyasu
12 B5N2-Lt. Matsuo Kaji
Mikazuki–Lt. Cdr. Maeda Saneho

Supply Group
Capt. Murao Jir
Oilers:
Sata–Capt. Murao
Tsurumi–Capt. Fujita Toshizo
Genyy Maru
Keny Maru
Akashi (repair ship)-Capt. Fukuzawa Tsunekichi

Close Support Group

VADM Kurita Takeo

Cruiser Division 7–Vice Admiral Kurita

Kumano–Capt. Tanaka Kikumatsu (flagship)
Suzuya–Capt. Kimura Masatomi
Mikuma–Capt. Sakiyama Shakao† (posthumously promoted to rear admiral)
Mogami–Capt. Soji Akira

Destroyer Division 8–Cdr. Ogawa Nobuki

 Asashio–Lt. Cdr. Yoshii Gor
Arashio–Cdr. Kuboki Hideo
Nichiei Maru (oiler)

Transport Group
RADM Tanaka Raiz
Transports (about 5,000 troops-Capt. Ota Minoru (IJN) and Col. Ichiki
Kiyonao (Army))
Kiyozumi Maru
Keiy Maru
Zenyy Maru
Goshu Maru #2
T a Maru
Kano Maru
Argentina Maru
Hokuriku Maru
Brazil Maru
Kirishima Maru
Azuma Maru
Nankai Maru
Patrol boats #1, #2, #34 (carrying troops)
Akebono Maru (oiler)
Destroyer Squadron 2
Rear Admiral Tanaka Raiz
Jints –Capt. Kozai Toraz (flagship)

Destroyer Division 15–Capt. Sat Torajir

Kuroshio–Cdr. Ugaki Tamaki
Oyashio–Cdr. Arima Tokiyoshi

Destroyer Division 16–Capt. Shibuya Shiro

Yukikaze–Cdr. Tobita Kenjir
Amatsukaze–Cdr. Hara Tameichi
Tokitsukaze–Cdr. Nakahara Giichir
Hatsukaze–Cdr. Takahashi Kameshir

Destroyer Division 18–Capt. Miyasaka Yoshito

Shiranuhi–Cdr. Akazawa Shizuo
 Kasumi–Cdr. Tomura Kiyoshi
Kager –Cdr. Yokoi Minoru
Arare–Cdr. Ogata Tomoe

Seaplane Tender Group

RADM Fujita Ry tar

Seaplane Tender Div 11

Chitose–Capt. Furukawa Tamotsu
Aircraft:
16 F1M, 4 E13A
Kamikawa Maru–Capt. Shinoda Tarohachi
Aircraft:
8 F1M, 4 E13A
Hayashio–Cdr. Kaneda Kiyoshi
Patrol Boat #35 (carrying troops)

Minesweeper Group
Capt. Miyamoto Sadatomo
Minesweepers:
Tama Maru #3
Tama Maru #5
Sh nan Maru #7
Sh nan Maru #8
Subchasers #16, #17, #18
S ya (supply ship)–Cdr. Kubota Toshi
Meiy Maru (cargo)
Yamafuku Maru (cargo)

Advance (Submarine) Force (6th Fleet)

VADM Komatsu Teruhishi
Chief of staff: RADM Mito Hisashi
Katori–Capt. Owada Noboru (flagship, at Kwajalein)

SubRon 3
 RADM K no Chimaki
Yasakuni Maru (flagship, at Kwajalein)

SubDiv 11
I-174–Lt. Cdr. Kusaka Toshi
I-175–Lt. Cdr. Uno Kameo

SubDiv 12
I-171–Lt. Cdr. Kawasaki Rokuro
1-169–Lt. Cdr. Watanabe Katsuji
I-168–Lt. Cdr. Tanabe Yahachi

SubDiv 13–Capt. Miyazaki Takeharu

I-121–Lt. Cdr. Fujimori Yasuo
I-122–Lt. Cdr. Norita Sadatoshi
I-123–Lt. Cdr. Ueno Toshitake (all assigned to transporting gas and oil to
French Frigate Shoals or Laysan Island)

SubDiv 19–Capt. Ono Ry jir

I-156–Lt. Cdr. hashi Katsuo
I-157–Lt. Cdr. Nakajima Sakae
I-158–Lt. Cdr. Kitamura Soshichi
I-159–Lt. Cdr. Yoshimatsu Tamori

SubDiv 30–Capt. Teraoka Masao

I-162–Lt. Cdr. Kinashi Takakazu
I-165–Lt. Cdr. Harada Hakue
I-166–Lt. Cdr. Tanaka Makio

Shore-Based Air Force, 11th Air Fleet

VADM Tsukahara Nishizo (at Tinian)
Chief of staff: RADM Sakamaki Munetaka

Midway Expeditionary Force

Capt. Morita Chisato
(transported by CV of 1st & 2nd CV strike force)
Aircraft:
36 Zeros-Lt. Cdr. Kofukuda Mitsugu
 10 land-based bombers (at Wake), 6 flying boats (at Jaluit)

24th Air Flotilla

RADM Maeda Minoru

Chitose Air Group–Capt. Ohashi Fujir

Aircraft:
36 Zeros, 36 torpedo planes (at Kwajalein)

1st Air Group–Capt. Inoue Samaji

Aircraft:
36 Zeros, 36 torpedo planes (at Aur and Wotje)

14th Air Group–Capt. Nakajima Daiz

Aircraft:
18 flying boats (at Jaluit and Wotje)

THE ALEUTIANS OPERATION (AL)

(Aleutians Force, 5th Fleet)

Second Carrier Striking Force

RADM Kakuta Kakuji

Carrier Group

CarDiv 4–Rear Admiral Kakuta

Ry j –Capt. Kato Tadao (flagship)
Air unit commander-Lt. Yamagami Masayuki
Aircraft:
12 A6M2-Lt. Kobayashi Minoru
18 B5N1 and B5N2-Lt. Yamagami
Juny –Capt. Ishii Shizue
Air unit commander-Lt. Shiga Yoshio
Aircraft:
18 A6M2 (including 12 aircraft from 6th Air Group)–Lt. Shiga
 15 D3A1–Lt. Abe Zenji
Note: 12 of the A6M2 pilots were members of 6th Air Group

Support Group

Cruiser Division 4 (Section 2)

Maya–Capt. Nabeshima Shunsaki
Takao–Capt. Asakura Bunji

Screen: Destroyer Division 7–Capt. Konishi Kaname

Akebono–Lt. Cdr. Nakagawa Minoru
Ushio–Lt. Cdr. Uesugi Yoshitake
Sazanami–Lt. Cdr. Uwai Hiroshi
Teiy Maru (oiler)

Main Body
VADM Hosogaya Moshir
Chief of staff: Capt. Nakazawa Tasuku
Nachi–Capt. Kiyota Takahiko (flagship)

Screen
Lt. Cdr. Takeuchi Hajime
Inazuma–Lt. Cdr. Takeuchi
Ikazuchi–Lt. Cdr. Kudo Shunsaku

Supply Group
Fujisan Maru (oiler)
Nissan Maru (oiler)
3 cargo ships

Attu-Adak Invasion Force

RADM mori Sentar
Abukuma–Capt. Murayama Seiroku

Destroyer Division 21–Capt. Shimizu Toshio

Wakaba–Lt. Cdr. Kuroki Masakichi
 Nenohi–Lt. Cdr. Terauchi Sabur
Hatsuharu–Lt. Cdr. Makino Hiroshi
Hatsushimo–Lt. Cdr. Kohama Satoru
Magane Maru (minelayer)
Kinugasa Maru (transport, 1200 army troops under Maj. Hozumi
Matsutoshi)

Kiska Invasion Force

Capt. Ono Takeji

Cruiser Division 21
Kiso–Capt. Ono
Tama–Capt. Kawabata Masaharu
Asaka Mam (aux. cruiser)–Capt. Ban Jiro
Awata Maru (aux. cruiser)

Destroyer Division 6–Capt. Yamada Yusuke

Hibiki–Lt. Cdr. Ishii Hagumu
Akatsuki–Lt. Cdr. Takasuka Osamu
Hokaze–Lt. Cdr. Tanaka Tomo
Hakusan Maru (transport, 550 troops under Lt. Cdr. Mukai Hifumi)
Kumagawa Maru (transport, 700 labor troops with const. equip.)

Minesweeper Division 13–Capt. Mitsuka Toshio

Hakuh Maru
Kaiho Maru
Shinkotsu Maru

Submarine Detachment
SubRon 1
RADM Yamazaki Shigeaki
I-9–Cdr. Fujii Akiyoshi (flagship)

Submarine Division 2–Capt. Imazato Hiroshi

I-15–Cdr. Ishikawa Nobuo
I-17–Cdr. Nishino K z
 I-19–Cdr. Narahara Sh go

Submarine Division 4–Capt. Nagai Mitsuru

I-25–Cdr. Tagami Meiji
I-26–Cdr. Yokota Minoru

Aleutian Seaplane Tender Force

Capt. Ujuku Keiichi
Kimikawa Maru (seaplane tender)–Capt. Ujuku
Aircraft:
8 3-seat floatplanes Destroyer
Shiokaze–Lt. Tanegashima Yoji
† = Killed in Action
Appendix 3: The Carriers of Kid Butai

AKAGI
Specifications

Builder: Kure Naval Dockyard

Laid down: Dec 6, 1920
Launched: Apr 22, 1925
Commissioned: Mar 25, 1927

As Built

Displacement: 26,900 tons (standard), 34,364 tons (normal)

Length: 857 ft 0 in (OA), 816 ft 7 in (WL), 764 ft 5 in (PP)
Beam: 95 ft 0 in
Draught: 26 ft 6 in
2
Machinery: Gijitsu Honbu geared turbines, 19 Kampon boilers (19.3 kg/cm
generating saturated steam), 4 shafts (210 rpm)
Performance: 131,000 shp; 31 knots
Bunkerage: 3,900 tons fuel oil, 2,100 tons coal
Range: 8,000 nm at 14 knots
Flight-deck 562 ft 0 in × 100 ft 0 in, plus 60 ft (approx) and 160 ft (approx)
dimensions: flying-off platforms at hangar-deck levels
Elevators: 2 (38 ft 6 in × 42 ft 8 in, 42 ft 0 in × 27 ft 6 in)
Arrester Longitudinal system initially, then 6 cross-deck wires
wires: (electrically controlled)
3 (upper, middle, and lower; lower used for disassembled aircraft
Hangar decks:
stowage only)
Hangar decks:
stowage only)
upper 516 ft × 75 ft (approx), middle 557 ft × 75 ft (approx),
Hangar
lower 170 ft × 50 ft (approx); upper and middle hangar area,
dimensions:
80,475 sq ft total (approx), lower hangar 8,515 sq ft (approx)
Aircraft: 60
Armament: 10 × 8 in/50-cal LA, 12 × 4.7 in/45-cal HA, 22 MGs
Armor: 6 in belt, 3.1 in deck
Complement: 1,600
Cost: ¥53,000,000 (approx)

As Reconstructed (1935-38)

Displacement: 36,500 tons (standard), 41,300 tons (normal)

Length: 855 ft 3 in (OA), 821 ft 5 in (WL), 770 ft 0 in (PP)
Beam: 102 ft 9 in
Draught: 28 ft 7 in
2
Machinery: Gijitsu Honbu geared turbines, 19 Kampon boilers (19.3 kg/cm
generating saturated steam), 4 shafts (210 rpm)
Performance: 133,000 shp; 31.25 knots
Bunkerage: 5,775 tons fuel oil, 225,000 gallons aviation fuel
Range: 8,200 nm at 16 knots
Flight-deck
817 ft 6 in × 100 ft 0 in
dimensions:
3 (38 ft 6 in × 42 ft 6 in, 42 ft 0 in × 27 ft 6 in, 37 ft 6 in × 41 ft 3
Elevators:
in)
Arrester
9 (hydraulic)
wires:
3 (upper, middle, and lower; lower used for disassembled aircraft
Hangar decks:
stowage only)
upper and middle 620 ft × 75 ft (approx), lower 170 ft × 50 ft
Hangar
(approx); upper and middle hangar area 93,000 sq ft (approx),
dimensions:
lower hangar 8,515 sq ft (approx)
91 (total, when recommissioned); 63 operational (approx) in
Aircraft:
1941
Armament: 6 × 8 in/50-cal LA, 12 × 4.7 in/45-cal HA, 28 × 25 mm AA
Fire-control 1 × Type 89 (8 in LA), 2 × Type 94 (4.7 in AA), 6 × Type 95 (25
Fire-control 1 × Type 89 (8 in LA), 2 × Type 94 (4.7 in AA), 6 × Type 95 (25
equipment: mm AA)
Armor: 6 in belt, 3.1 in deck
Complement: 1,630

Notes
At the time of the Battle of Midway, Akagi was the flagship of First Carrier
Division, the First Air Fleet, and the First Mobile Striking Force. Originally laid
down as a battle cruiser in 1920, she had instead been completed as an aircraft
carrier after Japan’s ratification of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. Akagi
was launched in 1925 and commissioned two years later.

A3-1: Aircraft carrier Akagi.

As originally built, Akagi had three aircraft flight decks and no
superstructure. Operational experience developed through her first years of
service made it clear that she would need to be reconstructed. She was taken in
hand for a complete refit beginning in October 1935. Financial difficulties
slowed her conversion, and it was not until August 1938 that Akagi was returned
to active service. As reconstructed, with a full length flight deck, enlarged
hangars, a third elevator, and a true carrier island, she was one of the most
capable carriers in the world, despite her relatively advanced years.
 KAGA
Specifications

Builder: Kawasaki Dockyard Co. and Yokosuka Naval Dockyard

Laid down: Jul 19, 1920
Launched: Nov 17, 1921
Commissioned: Mar 31, 1928

As Built

Displacement: 26,000 tons (standard), 33,693 tons (normal)

Length: 782 ft 6 in (OA), 771 ft 0 in (WL), 715 ft 1 in (PP)
Beam: 97 ft 0 in
Draught: 26 ft 0 in
Brown-Curtiss geared turbines, 12 Kampon boilers (19.3 kg/cm2
Machinery:
generating saturated steam), 4 shafts (210 rpm)
Performance: 91,000 shp; 28.5 knots
Bunkerage: 3,600 tons fuel oil, 1,700 tons coal
Range: 8,000 nm at 14 knots
Flight-deck 560 ft 0 in × 100 ft 0 in, plus 60 ft (approx) and 160 ft (approx)
dimensions: flying-off platforms at hangar-deck levels
Elevators: 2 (37 ft 8 in × 39 ft 5 in, 35 ft 0 in × 52 ft 0 in)
Arrester
6 (electrically controlled)
wires:
3 (upper, middle, and lower; lower used for disassembled aircraft
Hangar decks:
stowage only)
upper 415 ft × 65 ft (approx), middle 470 ft × 75 ft (approx),
Hangar
lower 116 ft × 48 ft (approx); upper and middle hangar area
dimensions:
62,225 sq ft (approx), lower hangar 5,568 sq ft (approx)
Aircraft: 60
Armament: 10 × 8 in/50-cal LA, 12 × 4.7 in/45-cal HA, 2 MGs
Armor: 6 in belt, 1.5 in deck
Complement: 1,340
Cost: ¥53,000,000 (approx)
Cost: ¥53,000,000 (approx)

As Reconstructed (1934–35)

Displacement: 38,200 tons (standard), 42,541 tons (normal)

Length: 812 ft 6 in (OA), 788 ft 5 in (WL), 738 ft 2 in (PP)
Beam: 106 ft 8 in
Draught: 31 ft 1 in
Kampon geared turbines, 8 Kampon boilers (22 kg/cm2
Machinery: generating saturated steam), 4 shafts (2 × 210 rpm, 2 × 280 rpm),
4 shafts
Performance: 127,400 shp; 28.3 knots
Bunkerage: 8,208 tons fuel oil, 600 tons avgas
Range: 10,000 nm at 16 knots
Flight-deck
815 ft 6 in × 100 ft 0 in
dimensions:
3 (37 ft 8 in × 39 ft 5 in, 35 ft 0 in × 52 ft 0 in, 42 ft 0 in × 31 ft 5
Elevators:
in)
Arrester
9 (hydraulically controlled)
wires:
3 (upper, middle, and lower; lower used for disassembled aircraft
Hangar decks:
stowage only)
upper and middle 615 ft × 88 ft (approx), lower 116 ft × 48 ft
Hangar
(approx); upper and middle hangar area 108,240 sq ft (approx),
dimensions:
lower hangar 5,568 sq ft (approx)
91 (total, when recommissioned); 72 operational (approx) in
Aircraft:
1941
Armament: 10 × 8 in/50-cal LA, 16 × 5 in/40-cal DP, 28 × 25 mm AA
Fire-control 2 × Type 89 (8 in LA), 2 × Type 91 (5 in AA), 6 × Type 95 (25
equipment: mm AA)
Armor: 6 in belt, 1.5 in deck
Complement: 1,708

Notes
Perennial companion to Akagi, Kaga was laid down as a battleship in 1920.
With Japan’s acceptance of the Washington Naval Treaty, work on all capital
ships was halted in 1922, leaving Kaga half-built. She would have been scrapped
or expended, had not the Tokyo Earthquake of 1923 damaged Akagis sistership,
Amagi, so badly on the building ways that she had to be written off as a total
loss. In her place, Kaga was selected for completion as an aircraft carrier. She
was launched in 1925 and commissioned three years later after a lengthy fit out.

A3-2: Aircraft carrier Kaga.

Like Akagi, Kaga was originally commissioned with three flight decks,
none of them being full-length. Likewise, her early service showed the
deficiency of her original design. Beginning in June 1934, she was taken in hand
for a refit. Kaga’s hull was lengthened (for greater speed), and a single, full-
length flight deck erected. Her hangar spaces were enlarged, a third elevator
added, and an island built. Her heavy and light antiaircraft armament was
increased, and she was given new engines and boilers as well. When she
emerged, she was one of the largest carriers in the world and possessed the
biggest flight deck in the Japanese Navy until the commissioning of Sh kaku in
1941. While her lower speed meant that she was never quite as useful as Akagi,
she remained a well-regarded vessel until the time of her sinking.
 S RY
Specifications

Builder: Kure Naval Dockyard

Laid down: Nov 20, 1934
Launched: Dec 21, 1935
Commissioned: Jan 29, 1937
Displacement: 15,900 tons (standard), 18,800 tons (normal)
Length: 746 ft 5 in (OA), 729 ft 9 in (WL), 677 ft 7 in (PP)
Beam: 69 ft 11 in
Draught: 25 ft 0 in

Machinery: 4 sets geared turbines, 8 Kampon boilers (22 kg/cm2 , 300o C),
4 shafts (340 rpm)
Performance: 152,000 shp; 34.5 knots
Bunkerage: 3,670 tons fuel oil, 150,000 gallons avgas
Range: 7,750 nm at 18 knots
Flight-deck
711 ft 6 in × 85 ft 4 in
dimensions:
3 (37 ft 9 in × 52 ft 6 in, 37 ft 9 in × 39 ft 4 in, 38 ft8 in × 32 ft
Elevators:
10 in)
Arrester wires: 9 (hydraulically controlled)
Hangar decks: 2
Hangar upper 562 ft × 60 ft × 15 ft (approx), lower 467 ft × 60 ft × 14
dimensions: ft (approx); 61,740 sq ft (approx)
Aircraft: 68 (total, when commissioned); 57 operational(approx) in 1941
Armament: 12 × 5 in/40-cal DP, 28 × 25 mm AA
Fire-control
2 × Type 94 (5 in AA), 5 × Type 95 (25 mm AA)
equipment:
Armor: 1.8 in belt, 1 in deck (2.2 in over the magazines)
Complement: 1,103
Cost: ¥40,200,000

Notes
 S ry was Japan’s first truly modern aircraft carrier and remained the
archetype for all future Japanese carriers. Her sleek cruiser-type hull, combined
with powerful machinery, gave her very high speed. Twin downswept stacks
mounted to starboard vented exhaust gases away from the flight deck. She
possessed dual hangar decks served by three elevators, making her capable of
handling a comparatively large air wing for her size. However, she was lightly
constructed, carried practically no armor, and was thus highly vulnerable to
attack. Nevertheless, the Japanese Navy found her extremely useful, and she was
well liked.

HIRY
Specifications

Builder: Yokosuka Naval Dockyard

Laid down: Jul 8, 1936
Launched: Nov 16, 1937
Commissioned: Jul 5, 1939
Displacement: 17,300 tons (standard), 20,250 tons (normal)
Length: 745 ft 11 in (OA), 721 ft 9 in (WL), 687 ft 5 in (PP)
Beam: 73 ft 3 in
Draught: 25 ft 9 in
Machinery: 4 sets geared turbines, 8 Kampon boilers (22 kg/cm2 , 300° C),
4 shafts (340 rpm)
Performance: 153,000 shp; 34.5 knots
Bunkerage: 4,400 tons fuel oil (approx), 150,000 gallons avgas
Range: 10,330 nm at 18 knots
Flight-deck
711 ft 6 in × 88 ft 6 in
dimensions:
3 (42 ft 8 in × 52 ft 6 in, 42 ft 8 in × 39 ft 4 in, 38 ft 8 in × 42 ft
Elevators:
8 in)
Arrester wires: 6 aft, 3 forward, all hydraulic
Hangar decks: 2
Hangar upper 562 ft × 60 ft × 15 ft (approx), lower 467 ft × 60 ft × 14
dimensions: ft (approx); 61,740 sq ft (approx)
dimensions: ft (approx); 61,740 sq ft (approx)
73 (total, when commissioned); 59 operational (approx) in
Aircraft:
1941
Armament: 12 × 5 in/40-cal DP, 33 × 25 mm AA
Fire-control
2 × Type 94 (5 in AA), 5 × Type 95 (25 mm AA)
equipment:
3.5 in belt (magazines 5.9 in), 1 in deck (2.2 in over the
Armor:
magazines)
Complement: 1,103
Cost: ¥40,200,000

A3-3: Aircraft carrier S ry .


A3-4: Aircraft carrier Hiry .

Notes
Commissioned two and a half years after her slightly smaller sister, Hiry
improved on S ry s design in a number of respects. Her slightly greater beam
meant that her fuel capacity (and hence cruising range) were increased by about
20 percent. She was also somewhat better protected, although only marginally
so, and remained profoundly vulnerable to attack. Nevertheless, with her long
range, high speed, and relatively large air wing, she was well regarded by the
Japanese. Even after the splendid Sh kaku-class carriers were commissioned in
1941, the Hiry s basic design was judged to be easier to produce, and as such
served as the template for the late-war Unry -class carriers.

Casualties
The following casualty figures are developed from Sawachi Hisae, Midowei
Kaisen: Kiroku, which lists the name, province of birth, term of service, age, and
rank of every Japanese fatality in the battle, grouped by the vessel they were
serving aboard.


Air Group Casualties

It should be noted that Hisae’s loss figures for casualties among the carrier
air crews require explanation. While her summary data lists a total of 98 carrier
aircrew fatalities, a hand count of the individual ship returns indicates a final
figure of 110, as not all aviator casualties are listed as airmen. The figure of 110
aviators is further supported by James Sawruk’s and Mark Horan’s detailed
casualty figures, which were developed directly from Japanese air group
records.1 These show aircrew losses as follows:

Notes on Carrier Data

Regarding the Illustrations

The illustrations show the carriers on 4 June, 1942. For all four ships we
used the photographic record to amend and correct details found on other
drawings. However, the photographic record for these four ships during the war,
particularly S ry and Kaga, is sparse. This complicated the task of preparing
illustrations of the flight deck marking schemes, because these were apparently
changed aboard the four carriers just days before Kid Butai sailed for Midway.
The most striking change to the flight deck markings was the painting of a
large red rising sun emblem (“#8217;hinomaru”) on the forward flight deck.
This augmented the white kana symbols (“a” for Akagi, “hi” for Hiry , “sa”
for S ry 2 and “ka” for Kaga) that were already present on the port quarter of
the flight deck for aircraft recognition purposes. The photographic record from
Midway includes a number of overhead shots of the carriers taken by B-17
bombers (one picture of Akagi, two of S ry , and three of Hiry 3 ). The picture
of Akagi clearly shows both the hinomaru and the kana symbol. In addition, her
hinomaru is completely enclosed in a white rectangle spanning the width of the
flight deck. The picture of S ry shows the hinomaru (enclosed like Akagis in a
large white rectangle), but the kana symbol, if present, is indistinct. Hiry s
photos show the kana symbol and hinomaru as well. Her hinomaru is not
enclosed in a white rectangle, although it does have a white border. In addition,
unlike Akagi and S ry , her white deck stripes are clearly visible trisecting the
hinomaru itself. No photographs of Kaga from 4 June have survived, but is
presumed that she had roughly the same configuration as Hiry , that is, a
freestanding hinomaru unenclosed by a white background.

Regarding Aviation Fuel

Finding accurate figures for aviation gasoline storage is a maddeningly
difficult problem, because few reference books indicate their sources, and none
of them indicate whether they are using English or U.S. gallons as a measure. As
a result, we have used plans of the ships as a source to derive the tankage
volume. Volume is given in U.S. gallons, which is .1336 cubic feet, or 3.7854
liters.
Kaga: 154,000 U.S. gallons (20,550 cubic feet of tankage (as derived from
plans) × 7.48 gallons/cu ft.)
Akagi: 150,000 gallons (20,054 cubic feet, as derived from plans)
Hiry : 134,000 gallons
S ry : 134,000 gallons
Regarding Spare Aircraft
Reference works on the Japanese Navy can leave the reader with a
deceptive portrait of the number of aircraft aboard Japanese aircraft carriers. For
instance, the figure of “91 aircraft” carried aboard the Kaga found in many naval
reference books has to be used with some caution. Kaga may very well have
carried 91 aircraft at some point in her career, but it is clear that she never
carried 91 active aircraft, nor did she carry 91 aircraft around the time of the
Battle of Midway.
There are three factors that explain this apparent discrepancy. The first is
that Japanese carriers often carried spare aircraft that were counted in the total.
These planes were stored in a semiassembled state near the hangars. In the case
of these Akagi and Kaga aircraft were carried in a third, lower hangar abreast the
eight-inch casemate guns. On Hiry and S ry , there were storage bays on the
port side of the elevator wells on both the upper and lower hangar decks.
Aircraft stored in such a fashion were not readily available, and thus cannot be
included in the operational totals. However, since they were available as
replacements to the air groups within a matter of days, and were organic to the
air groups, they deserve to be included in the overall totals.
The second factor is that combat aircraft in 1942 were larger than their
predecessors in the 1920s, and hence fewer of them could be carried into battle
than before. Third and last is the fact that the nominal published aircraft totals
did not account for the fact that not all aircraft stow with the same degree of
efficiency. For instance, the Type 99 dive-bomber took up a great deal of space
belowdecks, whereas the Type 97 torpedo bomber did not, this despite the fact
that both aircraft were roughly the same size when their wings were unfolded.
Carrier air group composition therefore played a role in determining aircraft
totals aboard ship.
Appendix 4: The Aircraft of Kid Butai

This appendix provides technical information on the major types of aircraft
carried by the Japanese aircraft carriers, as well as the floatplanes carried by
Battleship Division 3 (Haruna and Kirishima) and Cruiser Division 8 (Tone and
Chikuma)1

Mitsubishi A6M2 Model 21

Official
Navy Type 0 Carrier Fighter
designation:
Subsequent
Allied code “Zeke”
name:2
Description: Single-seat carrier-borne and land-based fighter
Crew: 1
One Nakajima Sakae 12 fourteen-cylinder air-cooled radial,
Powerplant:
940 hp at takeoff, driving a three-blade propeller
Two 7.7 mm Type 97 machine guns, two 20 mm Type 99
Armament:
cannon
Two 60 kg (132 lb) bombs, one 330 liter (72.6 Imp gal) drop
Bomb load:
tank

Dimensions

Span: 39 ft 4 in
Length: 29 ft 8 in
Height: 11 ft 6 in
Weight
3,704 lb
 Empty: 3,704 lb
Loaded: 5,313 lb

Performance

Maximum speed: 331 mph at 14,930 ft

Cruising speed: 207 mph
Climb: 19,685 ft in 7 min 27 sec
Service ceiling: 32,810 ft
Range: 1,010 nm (1,675 nm max)

A4-1: Mitsubishi A6M2 Model 21 carrier fighter

Notes
The standard carrier and land-based naval fighter at the outbreak of the war,
this airplane was carried by all four Japanese carriers at the Battle of Midway.
One of the finest fighters in the world at the time, the Zero was fast, was
extremely maneuverable, and carried good firepower. In the hands of a skilled
pilot, it was an extremely dangerous opponent. However, light construction and
lack of armor and self-sealing fuel tanks were critical defects that would begin to
make themselves felt as the war progressed.
 Nakajima B5N2

Official
Navy Type 97 Carrier Attack Aircraft
designation:
Subsequent
Allied code “Kate”
name:
Description: Single-engine carrier-borne torpedo bomber
3 (pilot, observer/navigator/bomb aimer, radio
Crew:
operator/gunner)
One Nakajima NK1B Sakae 11 fourteen-cylinder air-cooled
Powerplant:
radial, 1,000 hp at takeoff, driving a three-blade propeller
Armament: One flexible rear-firing 7.7 mm Type 92 machine gun
Bomb load: One 800 kg (1,764 lb) torpedo, or 800 kg (1,764 lb) of bombs

a4-2: nakajima b5n2 carrier attack aircraft

Dimensions

Span: 50 ft 10 in
Length: 33 ft 9 in
Height: 12 ft 1 in
Height: 12 ft 1 in
Weight
Empty: 5,024 lb
Loaded: 8,378 lb

Performance

Maximum speed: 235 mph at 11,810 ft

Cruising speed: 161 mph at 11,810 ft
Climb: 9,845 in 7 min 40 sec
Service ceiling: 27,100 ft
Range: 528 nm (1,075 nm max)

Notes
Probably the finest torpedo bomber in the world at the outbreak of the
Pacific war, the B5N was large, relatively fast, and capable of hauling a heavy
bomb or torpedo load. It was used alternately in both reconnaissance, level-
bombing, and torpedo-attack roles. At the time of the Battle of Midway, newer
model B5N2s equipped all frontline carrier units. However, older B5N1s were
still in service in second-line units.

A4-3: Aichi D3A1 carrier bomber

 Aichi D3A1

Official
Navy Type 99 Carrier Bomber
designation:
Subsequent
Allied code “Val”
name:
Description: Single-engined carrier-borne and land-based dive-bomber
Crew: 2
One Mitsubishi Kinsei 43 fourteen-cylinder air-cooled radial,
Powerplant: 1,000 hp at takeoff, or Mitsubishi Kinsei 44 fourteen-cylinder air-
cooled radial, 1,070 hp at takeoff, driving a three-blade propeller
Two forward-firing 7.7 mm Type 97 machine guns, one flexible
Armament:
rear-firing 7.7 mm Type 92 machine gun
One 250 kg (551 lb) bomb under the fuselage and two 60 kg (132
Bomb load:
lb) bombs under the wings

Dimensions

Span: 47 ft 1 in
Length: 33 ft 5 in
Height: 12 ft 7 in
Weight
Empty: 5,309 lb
Loaded: 8,047 lb

Performance

Maximum speed: 240 mph at 9,845 ft

Cruising speed: 184 mph at 9,845 ft
Climb: 9,845 ft in 6 min 0 sec
Service ceiling: 30,050 ft
Range: 795 nm

Notes
 D3A1s equipped all frontline carrier dive-bomber formations at the time of
the Battle of Midway. A nimble aircraft, the D3A was also a very stable dive-
bomber. By the time of Midway, it was intended that the D3A should have been
superseded by the newer D4Y. But slow production of the latter meant that the
D3A eventually soldiered on well past its useful service life as the war
progressed.

Yokosuka D4Y1

Official
Experimental Model 13 Carrier Bomber3
designation:
Subsequent
Allied code “Judy”
name:
Single-engined carrier-borne and land-based dive-
Description:
bomber/reconnaissance aircraft
Crew: 2
One Aichi AE1A Atsuta twelve-cylinder inverted-vee liquid-
Powerplant: cooled engine, 1,200 hp at takeoff, driving a three-blade
propeller
Two fuselage-mounted 7.7 mm Type 97 machine guns, one
Armament:
flexible rear-firing 7.92 mm Type 1 machine gun
One 250 kg (551 lb) bomb stowed internally, and two 60 kg
Bomb load:
(132 lb) bombs under the wings

Dimensions

Span: 37 ft 9 in
Length: 33 ft 6 in
Height: 12 ft 1 in
Weight
Empty: 5,739 lb
Loaded: 8,047 lb
Performance

Maximum speed: 343 mph at 15,585 ft

Cruising speed: 265 mph at 9,845 ft
Climb: 9,845 ft in 5 min 14 sec
Service ceiling: 32,480 ft
Range: 850 nm

A4-4: Yokosuka D4Y1 carrier bomber

Notes
At the time of the Battle of Midway, a handful of prototype D4Y carrier
bombers had been produced, and full-scale production was pending. At least one
of these prototypes was shipped on board S ry and used as a reconnaissance
plane during the battle, a role for which its high speed suited it eminently.

Aichi E13A

Official
Navy Type 0 Reconnaissance Seaplane
designation:
Subsequent
Subsequent
Allied code “Jake”
name:
Description: Single-engined, twin float reconnaissance seaplane
Crew: 3
One Mitsubishi Kinsei 43 fourteen-cylinder air-cooled radial,
Powerplant:
1,000 hp at takeoff, driving a three-blade propeller
Armament: One flexible rear-firing 7.7 mm Type 92 machine gun
One 250 kg (551 lb) bomb under the fuselage, or four 60 kg
Bomb load:
(132 lb) bombs, or depth charges

Dimensions

Span: 47 ft 6 in
Length: 37 ft 0 in
Height: 24 ft 3 in
Weight
Empty: 5,825 lb
Loaded: 8,025 lb

A4-5: Aichi E13A reconnaissance seaplane

Performance

Maximum speed: 234 mph at 7,155 ft

Cruising speed: 138 mph at 6,560 ft
Climb: 9,845 ft in 6 min 5 sec
Service ceiling: 28,640 ft
Range: 1,128 nm

Notes
The standard long-range float scout plane carried by most Japanese heavy
cruisers. A mixture of Type 0 and Type 95 float aircraft were carried by cruisers
Tone and Chikuma (CruDiv 8) at Midway.

Nakajima E8N2

Official
Navy Type 95 Reconnaissance Seaplane
designation:
Subsequent
Allied code “Dave”
name:
Description: Single-engined reconnaissance seaplane
Crew: 2
One Nakajima 2 KAI2 nine-cylinder air-cooled radial, 630
Powerplant:
hp at takeoff, driving a two-blade propeller
One fixed forward firing 7.7 mm machine gun and one
Armament:
flexible rear-firing 7.7 mm machine gun
Bomb load: Two 60 kg (132 lb) bombs

Dimensions

Span: 36 ft 0 in
Length: 28 ft 10 in
Height: 12 ft 7 in
Weight
2,910 lb
 Empty: 2,910 lb
Loaded: 4,189 lb

A4-6: Nakajima E8N2 reconnaissance seaplane

Performance

Maximum speed: 186 mph at 9,845 ft

Climb: 9,845 ft in 6 min 31 sec
Service ceiling: 23,850 ft
Range: 485 nm

Notes
The older Type 95 was used for spotting and fleet support duties such as
ASW patrol. By the time of Midway, it no longer possessed the necessary range
to operate as a true reconnaissance plane. Type 95s were carried on board both
the heavy cruisers Tone and Chikuma, as well as the battleships Haruna and
Kirishima.
Appendix 5: Japanese Amphibious Operations against
Midway–An Analysis

Had the Japanese triumphed against the U.S. Navy in the naval phase of the
Battle of Midway, the stage would have been set for an amphibious landing
against the atoll on the morning of 6 June. Down through the years it has
commonly been supposed that the Japanese would have overwhelmed the
American defenders with a combination of air and gun power, paving the way
for a successful landing by Colonel Ichiki’s detachment and Captain Ito’s Naval
Special Landing Force.1 Perhaps this is simply a natural outgrowth of the
mistaken belief surrounding the relative odds in the naval conflict, that the
fallacious notion of overwhelming Japanese numerical superiority should have
been extended by proxy to the relative odds facing the American ground
defenders. But was a Japanese victory really the likely outcome of such an
encounter?
In fact, a more dispassionate analysis reveals nearly as many flaws in the
Japanese plans for the invasion as beset the battle at the strategic level. Instead, a
careful examination almost inevitably leads to the conclusion that the Japanese
faced formidable obstacles, not only of numbers and geography, but also of
amphibious doctrine, training, and coordination. As a result, Midway’s
defenders would likely have held the atoll, at least in the short term.2
Even postulating a naval victory, in truth the Imperial Navy was miserably
prepared to support a landing against Midway. The Japanese Navy had little in
the way of either an established ground attack doctrine for its aircraft, or a tested
naval gunfire support doctrine. Given the hostility between the two branches of
the imperial services, this is not surprising. The Navy saw its mission as the
destruction of enemy warships, not supporting the landing of Army troops. The
practical effect of this, though, was to render distinctly less effective any air
support the carriers of Kid Butai might be able to provide. The positions of the
U.S. Marines ashore were well sited and emplaced. In some cases, they were
equipped with reinforced concrete shelters, which were nearly bombproof. Even
the less well-protected troops were well dug in and protected by sandbags and
natural fortifications. The attack by Tomonaga’s strike force on the morning of 4
June, while destroying some of the more-visible facilities on the islands, such as
oil tanks and barracks, had degraded the real defensive capacity of the Marine
defenders hardly at all. Not a single heavy gun of any sort had been put out of
commission, and total personnel losses were six KIA.3 There is no reason to
suppose that one or two additional strikes by Japanese carrier aircraft on 5 June
and the morning of 6 June would have appreciably altered this basic equation
before the landings occurred. In other words, the majority of the Marines’
weaponry would likely have remained intact.
By the same token, the guns of CruDiv 7–the cruisers Kumano, Suzuya,
Mikuma, and Mogami–were ill equipped to perform much better. Given the rigid
operational timetable laid down by Yamamoto, and the stated intention to land
the troops at first light,4 their bombardment of the islands could not help but be
desultory. Tarawa, Kwajalein, and a dozen other sites in the Central Pacific
subsequently demonstrated to the Americans that dug-in island defenses were
generally proof against heavy-caliber weapons, even when over extended
periods of time. A quick bombardment from shipborne eight-inch guns with no
practice in target identification or selection simply wasn’t going to get the job
done. The Marines might have been shaken by it, but odds were that they would
have survived largely undamaged.
Admittedly, the Japanese also had the ability to direct gunfire against
targets of opportunity on Midway once the landings were under way and the
American weapons exposed themselves. But it was unlikely that any Japanese
warships would want to close the range too closely until the four seven-inch
guns emplaced on the southern shores of Sand and Eastern Islands were taken
out. Even then, it is extremely doubtful that Japanese fire would have been
terribly accurate, since such missions were not a part of their normal doctrine.
Likewise, it is almost impossible to anticipate any of the landing troops having
the ability to communicate with the warships directly–the necessary doctrine and
portable radio equipment simply weren’t there.
Beyond these hurdles, Midway’s geography also presented a very difficult
target. It is almost completely surrounded by an exposed coral reef. There are
gaps on the western side, but they do not constitute a useful approach, leading as
they do to wide shallows of unpredictable depth. To the south, a small gap had
been blasted for the ship channel, but it lay directly under the heavy guns of both
islands. The result is that most of the shoreline could not be directly approached
by landing craft. The tidal range at Midway is quite small, with a mean range of
only nine inches, and a diurnal range of fifteen inches, meaning that there is no
high tide that can be counted on to whisk landing craft over the reef and allow
them access to the beaches unhindered. This, in turn, meant that the daihatsu
barges would have had to discharge their human cargo on the farther side of the
reef. This was never less than 200 yards from shore, and sometimes as much as
double that. After being “landed,” the men would first have had to wade onto the
reef itself, exposing them to fire. From there, they would have to slog back into
the lagoon toward the beaches, through water that in many cases would have
come up to their chests, all the while under heavy fire. It was precisely to defeat
this sort of natural obstacle that the Americans went on to develop the famous
Amtrac amphibious landing craft. In June 1942, the Japanese could only have
dreamed of owning such a vehicle.
Ashore, the Americans were well entrenched and numerous. Depending on
which sources are consulted, there were anywhere from 3,000 to 4,500 personnel
on the islands.5 The majority of them, being Marines, were infantrymen by
original training whatever their current operational capacity. The Americans had
laid antiboat obstacles in the water. Along the beaches, rows of electrically
detonated mines had been planted along with seemingly endless strands of
barbed wire. The Marines had even gone so far as to create more than 1,500
improvised explosive devices for use against tanks. A platoon of M3 Stuart light
tanks was hidden in the heavy underbrush of Sand Island’s interior. Even before
the addition of “Carlson’s Raiders,” the Sixth Defense Battalion’s order of battle
included five five-inch guns, four three-inch antiboat guns, twelve three-inch AA
guns, forty-eight .50-caliber machine guns, and thirty-six .30-caliber machine
guns.6 The total number of three-inch AA guns on both islands was twenty-four,
and was further bolstered by the addition of 37-mm and 20-mm automatic guns
in the hands of an antiaircraft defense unit. “Wreck ’em on the reef!” was the
motto of Midway’s commander, Colonel Harold Shannon, and we have no
reason to doubt that every weapon at the colonel’s disposal would have been
unleashed as soon as the Japanese barges reached that unfortunate aquatic
terminus.
Despite their successes in amphibious operations in the Pacific to date, the
truth was that the Japanese had little experience against defended beachheads.
Their doctrine called for landings against undefended locales, typically at night.
On those occasions when they had been forced to make daylight assaults against
dug-in positions–such as those on Wake Island, as well as some minor
operations against the Bataan peninsula in the Philippines–the results had been
singularly unpleasant. It certainly didn’t auger well for the Midway operation
that neither the Army nor the Navy landing forces had apparently rehearsed their
respective parts in any detail, let alone exercised them together, before having
sailed from their separate ports of embarkation.
The most likely outcome of such a haphazard and ill-supported operation
being thrown against the heavily armed and entrenched defenders at Midway
was outright disaster. While alternative history can never be absolutely
predictive, we need only fast-forward two months to the subsequent destruction
of Colonel Ichiki’s detachment early in the Guadalcanal campaign to glimpse the
likely outlines of such a landing at Midway. There, Ichiki had chosen to charge a
much less well dug-in Marine position on the banks of Alligator Creek. The
result was that he and more than 700 of his men were slaughtered by a
combination of automatic weapons fire and canister shot from the American’s
37-mm guns. At Midway, the presence of some 2,500 attackers didn’t alter this
basic equation a whit.7 In fact, the Americans had vastly superior firepower to
draw on, and much better fire lanes to boot. Their weapons could engage the
enemy at range, while they were still well out on the reef. Even if any of the
Japanese made it to the beach (in itself a dubious proposition), it is almost
inconceivable that two shattered, geographically separated light infantry
regiments equipped with nothing more than rifles, light mortars, and a
smattering of medium machine guns would have been able to prevail against an
entrenched American force backed by mobile armor. Rather, all signs indicate
that the lagoon would have been full of Japanese corpses by about the middle of
the afternoon, leaving the imperial warships witness to an unprecedented
slaughter.
Once the initial wave of troops was expended, there was no reserve capable
of mounting a second offensive. The Imperial Navy might have had the ability to
bombard the place, but it certainly didn’t have the means to bring it to heel once
Ichiki and the naval landing troops were dead. The best they could have hoped
for at that juncture was a violent standoff, wherein the Imperial Navy’s warships
took what retribution they could while their logistical tether allowed. In the end,
though, it is likely that Kid Butai and Japan’s capital ships would have had no
choice but to withdraw, leaving the smashed island still in the hands of the
Americans–for the time being at any rate.
Appendix 6: Discovery of Carrier Kaga

Technological advancements in underwater exploration methods have
begun opening the great naval battlefields of the past. The discovery of the
Japanese battleship Yamato in 1985 was followed by the even more impressive
location of the German battleship Bismarck in 1989. These events marked a
watershed, in that they demonstrated that it is possible to locate and photograph
vessels whose sinking positions were known only inexactly. Since the beginning
of the 1990s to the present day, several important naval battle sites have been
documented in this fashion. Along the way, the ranks of rediscovered great
warships has swelled with the addition of such notables as the battle cruiser
HMS Hood, battleship Scharnhorst, submarine I-52, and numerous wrecks
around the island of Guadalcanal, including the cruisers Atlanta and Canberra,
and battleship Hiei.
Not surprisingly, the Battle of Midway has earned its share of attention in
this respect. Dr. Robert Ballard, who located both the liner Titanic and the
Bismarck, in 1998 succeeded in finding the USS Yorktown in 16,650 feet of
water. Yorktown was discovered to be in nearly perfect condition, having
impacted on the bottom upright and intact, with very little subsequent damage to
her hull and fittings. However, she still clearly bore the scars of her numerous
torpedo hits. Extensively photographed, she is (ironically perhaps) the most
visible physical relic of the battle still remaining. The island of Midway itself no
longer is open to tourists, and much of the physical evidence of the great battle
that was fought there has long since been removed.
During the same expedition, Dr. Ballard tried unsuccessfully to locate the
carrier Kaga as well. This is perhaps not surprising, as Kaga’s recorded sinking
positions were contradictory, and her movements after her fatal dive-bombing
were not well understood at the time. However, just a year later, in September
1999, a joint expedition between the undersea exploration firm Nauticos and the
Naval Oceanographic Office yielded an important discovery. Rather than simply
searching around the recorded positions of Kaga’s sinking, Nauticos used the
logs of the American submarine USS Nautilus, which had attacked Kaga during
the middle hours of 4 June, as the basis of its search. Using sophisticated
renavigation techniques, Nauticos and the Oceanographic Office decided on a
different survey area-one that varied considerably from Kaga’s recorded sinking
location. Sidescan sonar surveys of the target area yielded a hard contact, which
was subsequently located and photographed by an ROV.

A6-1: Photo mosaic of Kaga wreckage discovered in September 1999. View is
from the top, looking down at the ocean floor. Key: 1–companionway leading
into berthing compartment; 2–bottom edge of exterior bulkhead; 3–25-mm twin
gun tub; 4–landing light array (chakkan shidoto) arm; 5–1-kw landing light; 6–
gallery deck leading aft; 7–gallery deck leading forward; 8–support column for
25-mm gun tub. (Photo courtesy Nauticos)

The find was not the main wreck of Kaga, but rather a very large piece of
her wreckage. There, nearly 17,000 feet down, was a 50-foot-long section of
hangar bulkhead sticking upside down from the bottom. Attached to it, also
inverted, were two tubs for 25-mm antiaircraft guns. And attached to one of the
gun tubs was what turned out to be a landing light array (chakkan shidoto) used
by pilots to land their aircraft on the flight deck. As it happened, the authors
were subsequently contacted by Nauticos and performed the necessary forensic
analysis to definitively identify the wreckage as having come from Kaga.1
The significance of the find is threefold. First, it demonstrates that modern
undersea search techniques have advanced far beyond the realm of simply
opening up all the available reference books on a given ship’s sinking position,
drawing a box around the various reported sinking locations, and looking there.
Now, sophisticated renavigation techniques can lead to considerably improved
and refined search strategies. Second, the artifact solidifies the notion that
Kaga’s main wreck must lie somewhere nearby. The artifact serves as the logical
starting point for any future expedition.
Third, and most important, the wreckage discovered in 1999 gives mute
testimony to the violence and fury of the calamity that overtook Kaga. This
artifact–as big as a house, and weighing many tons–had been blown off the
starboard side of Kaga’s hangar deck like a piece of wet cardboard. Crumpled
and bent nearly in half, the weight of the twin 25-mm mounts in the gun tubs had
caused it to fall upside down some three miles to the ocean floor. We know from
Yoshino Haruo’s description of Kaga immediately before she sank that this
same process of explosive destruction had consumed the entire mid-portion of
the ship, leaving her a burned-out hulk.
The authors hope that another opportunity will present itself to document
this important battlefield. With the known position of Kaga’s artifact as a
starting point, locating her main wreck should not be difficult. From there, on the
basis of our better understanding of Kid Butai’s formation and distribution at
the time of the fatal attack, as well as Akagi and S ry s subsequent movements,
it may be possible to locate these latter two carriers as well. Finding Hiry will
be more difficult, as her sinking was not observed by any warship. However,
even documenting the locations of three of Kid Butai’s carriers would greatly
increase our knowledge of this crucial battlefield. As a seafaring country with a
long and glorious naval tradition, we owe it to ourselves, and our descendants, to
discover as much as we can about all the great ships involved in our nation’s
battles before the implacable forces of time and the sea destroy their crucial
evidence forever.
Appendix 7: Japanese Aircraft Tail Codes at the
Battle of Midway

Japanese carrier aircraft were identified by means of alphanumeric codes

painted on their tails. The first two or three characters indicated the carrier
division and carrier to which the aircraft belonged. For example, Carrier
Division 1 was designated by the prefix letter “A,” with the flagship Akagis
aircraft being “AI-” and Kaga’s being “AII-”. The ships in Carrier Division 2
carried “BI-” and “BII-”.
Following the divisional prefix on the tail was a three-digit suffix indicating
the aircraft type. Planes with “-1xx” were fighters, “-2xx” were dive-bombers,
and “-3xx” were carrier attack (torpedo) aircraft. Thus, “AI-121” would indicate
a fighter from Akagis fighter group, and “AII-201” would indicate a Kaga dive-
bomber.
Likewise, the rear fuselage of the aircraft was painted with vertical bands
just in front of the tail to indicate the mother carrier and its place within the
carrier division. A single red band around the fuselage meant the lead carrier in
Carrier Division 1–Akagi, whereas two red bands meant the second
carrier–Kaga. A single blue stripe meant the lead carrier in Carrier Division 2,
whereas a single white stripe designated the lead carrier in Carrier Division 5,
and so on.
Here’s where things get complicated. At the time of the Pearl Harbor attack,
S ry was the flagship of Carrier Division 2. As such, her aircraft were
designated “BI-xxx,” and Hiry s “BII-xxx”. As would be expected, S ry s
aircraft carried a single blue fuselage band, and Hiry s two. However, in late
April 1942, Admiral Yamaguchi, commander of Carrier Division 2, switched his
flag to Hiry . The reasons for doing so are obvious–Hiry was newer and had a
much larger island and better command facilities. According to the conventional
wisdom, Carrier Division 2’s aircraft designations should have been reversed as
a result of this switch, with Hiry ’s aircraft marked “BI-xxx,” and those of S ry
“BII-xxx,” along with corresponding changes in the fuselage bands. However,
it is not entirely clear whether this was actually done.
Obviously, there were practical limitations to doing so. In the first place,
the labor associated with having to repaint identification codes and markings on
more than a hundred aircraft on two carriers cannot be underestimated.
Particularly in the frantic few weeks of training between when CarDiv 2 returned
from the Indian Ocean on April 22 and left again for Midway on May 25, this
would have been a large undertaking, although certainly achievable.

A7-1: Japanese aircraft tail code markings. The example shown is the tail of the
lead aircraft of Akagi’s carrier attack aircraft unit, that of Commander Fuchida
Mitsuo.

More important, though, is the fact that the designations of warships, and
their relative status within a division, were not supposed to be directly under the
control of the fleet’s operational commands. Instead, they were mandated by the
Navy Ministry. According to a letter from Capt. (Ret.) Kitazawa Noritaka, of the
history department for Japan’s National Institute for Defense Studies, the codes
were established by the minister of the navy in 1936 and were given to the
individual ships themselves, and not to the division. This meant that a shift in the
flag’s location was nothing more than a convenience for the flag–it meant
nothing in terms of the relative standing of the vessels themselves as far as the
Navy Ministry was concerned. Furthermore, it meant that a carrier division was
not formally empowered to change the designation of its vessels or aircraft.
Regardless of where Yamaguchi flew his flag, S ry was still the senior vessel
in the division in the eyes of the Navy Ministry.
 This regulation was subsequently changed in November 1944, and
thereafter the designation power was granted to the commander in chief,
Combined Fleet. However, at the time of Midway the original 1936 regulation
was still in force.1 No official documentation has been discovered indicating that
the Navy Ministry changed the designations of CarDiv 2’s vessels as a result of
Yamaguchi’s change of flag. Given the apparently last-minute nature of the
shift, the subsequent destruction of both vessels, and the death of Yamaguchi,
this is hardly surprising. In sum, if the letter of the Navy’s regulations was
indeed being followed, Séryus aircraft should have retained their original “BI-
xxx” designations, and HiryWs her “BII-xxx” codes at the Battle of Midway.
However, it seems likely that the 1944 regulation was simply a belated de
facto recognition of a condition that had already existed for several years before.
Noted aviation historian Osamu Tagaya notes that tail codes for aircraft assigned
to Naisen Butai (Zone of the Interior) air forces in China before war broke out
were indeed designated by the Navy Ministry. However, once the war in China
began, and Gai-Sen Butai (Outside or Overseas Forces) were committed, the
evidence suggests that these aircraft designations were controlled directly by
Combined Fleet. In other words, just because the 1944 regulation is the only one
that has surfaced thus far pertaining to this matter, does not mean that this was
the first time that actual jurisdiction of the codes had been ceded to Combined
Fleet.2
Furthermore, there is credible direct evidence that asserts that Hiry s codes
were changed. First off, the Nagumo Report states that after the temporary shift
of the flag to S ry in early May 1942, Hiry was subsequently “permanently
assigned as Flagship.”3 This strongly indicates that, at least in the eyes of
Combined Fleet, Hiry was now to be treated as the new flagship.
In addition, several eyewitness accounts assert that the aircraft tail codes
were, in fact, changed immediately prior to Midway. An account from Mr.
Arimura Yoshikazu provides direct evidence to that effect. Arimura was in
charge of carrier bomber maintenance aboard Hiry at the time of Midway and
was obviously in a position to comment on the status of her aircraft tail codes,
since the men who would have had to do the repainting were under his
command. Arimura, in response to written questions from Jon Parshall, stated
that Hiry s codes had been changed to “BI-xxx.” He further indicated that the
codes had been changed at the time of Nagumo’s departure from Hashirajima on
27 May. His statement was confirmed by another Midway veteran, Maeda
Takeshi. While firsthand accounts, particularly at 60 years remove, must be
treated with caution, the state of Hiry s codes at that time is an objective, binary
piece of data. Mr. Arimura was clearly in a position to know about this matter,
and he left no doubt about his belief that the codes had been changed. As a result
of these pieces of evidence, the authors, and Osamu Tagaya, lean toward the
opinion that Hiry s tail codes were indeed changed.4 However, until concrete
evidence, such as a photograph of either a S ry or Hiry aircraft at the time of
the battle, or an official memo from the Navy Ministry acknowledging the
command change materializes, the truth of the matter will remain unknowable.
As to the tail codes assigned to individual pilots, they are not nearly as well
known at Midway as they were during the Pearl Harbor operations. In fact, most
of the “known” codes are simply extrapolated from the known codes used by
Pearl Harbor pilots who were still present on the same carriers six months later,
such as Egusa Takashige’s famous S ry No. 231 dive-bomber. Even this
carries with it an element of risk, in that it assumes that these pilots would not
have been assigned to new aircraft or shotai aboard their ships in the interim.
This matter is further complicated by the fact that, in some cases, replacement
aircraft were numbered identically with aircraft that had been lost previously.5
As a result, in most cases, the Midway aircraft tail codes are simply not known.
Inquiries to knowledgeable Japanese sources revealed that a comprehensive set
of these tail codes does not appear to exist in Japanese.
Appendix 8: Japanese Radar at Midway

The possibility that the Japanese employed radar at Midway remains one of
the tantalizing mysteries of the battle. Commander Amagai, Kaga’s air officer,
stated in his postwar interrogations for the United States Strategic Bombing
Survey that Hiry was equipped with radar during the battle. He describes the
unit as a prototype, characterized by a large, rotating bedspring antenna, and
mentions further that it did not perform very well. The reason Hiry was
equipped with such a unit was supposedly because of the large size of her
superstructure.
At the time, Amagai’s statement was discounted because of the
countervailing statements of Hiry s air officer, Commander Kawaguchi Susumu,
and Akagis captain, Aoki Taijiro, both of whom stated categorically that no radar
was in operation on any ship during the battle. Furthermore, most contemporary
sources regarding the development of Japanese shipborne radar date its
development as being too late to be installed aboard the Midway carriers. The
initial unit, the prototype of the Type 21 surface search radar, used a mattress
antenna like the one Amagai described. But it was only installed in May 1942
aboard the battleship Ise, and was tested thereafter in the Inland Sea.
However, additional evidence surfaced in the 1990s that resurrected the
debate. The first was a little-known report published immediately after the war
by the Army Air Force’s Air Technical Intelligence Group. This report also
interviewed Commander Amagai, and he again made the same statements
regarding Hiry ’s radar. The second source was a statement in the Hiry air
unit’s Midway action report, which contained a cryptic reference to “the radar
plots of the combat air patrol.”1 However, the wording in the report left it
unclear as to whether the alleged “radar plot” that the Hiry report was referring
to was that of Hiry herself or that of the enemy carrier formation that was being
described in the same paragraph.
The third clue was the publication of John Prados’s Combined Fleet
Decoded. In it, Prados made the statement that during the Indian Ocean raids,
Hiry was equipped with some sort of new detection gear that had a blind spot at
the rear of the ship. The source of this statement was said to be Hiry s detailed
action report from the sortie.2
To the authors of this work, this raised intriguing possibilities. It was
known that Commander Amagai was Hiry s hik ch during the Indian Ocean
operations and was only transferred aboard Kaga after he returned to Kure in
late April. He would have had a hand in writing the air combat portions of Hiry
s action report from the Indian Ocean. The fact that such a piece of detection
gear was supposedly mentioned in an internal Japanese action report shed a
whole new light on things–Amagai may have lied to his American interrogators,
but what motivation would an officer aboard Hiry have had in lying in two
separate action reports, which would (presumably) never have been read by the
enemy? Furthermore, certain elements of the story made sense–Hiry did have
the largest superstructure of any of the Japanese carriers, and a large
superstructure would be required in order to house the extra equipment and
personnel needed to operate such a device. What better platform to try the new
equipment out on than one of the units that had borne the lion’s share of the
action thus far? Clearly, having a primitive radar on Hiry , and in action, would
have garnered more practical information on this equipment’s usages in combat
than a similar unit aboard an older battleship whose operations thus far in the
war had involved mostly swinging at anchor at Hashirajima. It became
imperative, therefore, to locate this action report.
Easier said than done, as it turned out–the original copy had disappeared
from the National Archives! Finally, though, through the efforts of John
Lundstrom, a copy was turned up.3 And here the trail quickly dead-ended. Hiry
s Indian Ocean report, rather than describing a piece of radar equipment aboard
her, simply commented on the glaring need for newer detection equipment:

With the search installations at present on the Hiry class [i.e., referring
to the standard spotting glasses atop the island, as well as gun director
optics used for such searches–JP], it is very difficult to sight targets at an
altitude over 5000 meters. At present … an enemy bomber unit that breaks
into the center of the cruising disposition from the rear … cannot be
sighted. On the AKAGI there have been many times when the first warning
was the splash of the bombs. …As a counter-measure, it is necessary to
install AA search radar or sound equipment at once.4
While the report was fascinating in painting a picture of the very calamity
that would befall Japan’s carriers at Midway, it was clear that radar was not
aboard Hiry at the time of the Indian Ocean operations.
Other evidence further contradicts the notion that Hiry carried radar at
Midway. A careful examination of the two close-up pictures taken of Hiry
during the battle reveals no evidence of any radar antenna aboard the ship.5
Furthermore, an examination of Hiry s movements during the war discloses that
other than a brief time near Kure around Christmas 1941, Hiry was never in a
yard long enough to have been fitted with a prototype radar before the Indian
Ocean operation. Such an installation would have required the services of a
major shipyard and several weeks to accomplish-it certainly couldn’t have been
effected in Staring Bay or the other backwaters that Kid Butai had frequented in
the south.
Likewise, S ry and Akagi had adhered to roughly the same breakneck
operational tempo. And Kaga, though in Kure yard for quite a while having her
bottom repaired at around the same time that Ise’s prototype set was installed,
had far too small a superstructure to accommodate such equipment even if it had
been available. In the final analysis, then, it seems certain that no Japanese
carrier had radar at Midway. Commander Amagai’s statements must be
categorized as either misrememberings or as deliberate misstatements intended
to confuse his American interrogators.
Appendix 9: Chronology of Japanese Fighter
Operations

The following tables provide information pertaining to the fighter

operations occurring on board each Japanese carrier on June 4, 1942. Launch
and recovery for each plane of the watch are usually known, as are the pilot’s
name and rank. The pilot’s graduating class from flight school, as well as his fate
(if known) is recorded. It should be noted that several aircraft were orphaned by
the destruction of Akagi, Kaga, and S ry during the course of the day and
subsequently operated off of the Hiry . These aircraft are detailed under their
parent ship.1
A note on pilot classes is worth mentioning. The standard pilot training
course (Soren) had been put in place in 1912 and included both officers and
enlisted men. However, to further expand the pilot pool, the Flight Reserve
Enlisted Trainee (Yokaren) program was established in 1930. This program was
aimed at talented youngsters who were better educated than the enlisted men, yet
would not require several years of general naval training. The pressures of the
China Conflict exacerbated the need for recruits, and the yokaren program was
expanded to include an accelerated training course for students with a better
education. These Ko (A) category students spent twelve to fourteen months in
general training, compared to the two and a half years required of the primary
school graduates under the old system, which were now designated Otsu (B)
course students. To further complicate the situation, in 1940 recruits brought into
the naval air service from noncommissioned ranks under the old Soren system
were instead placed in what was now called the Hei (C) course category within
the Yokaren program.2 Each of these classes is so noted on the aviator’s record.


Consolidated Operational Log
The following table shows the air operations aboard each carrier as a single
chronology. The “Action” column denotes the aircraft launched in the following
format: Carrier Name (Initial)/Watch Number (Number of Aircraft). Thus “A
1(3)” indicates Akagi’s No. 1 watch, which consisted of three aircraft. By the
same token, “KFS(l)” indicates a single strike-escort fighter from
Kaga,“KBS(6)” indicates a six-plane chutai of dive-bombers used as temporary
emergency CAP by Kaga.


Notes:
Individual carrier fighter totals are denoted as follows:
# of aircraft on CAP # of aircraft on strike missions # aboard ship / # lost
thus far Fighters carried (organic Hikotai +6th Kokutai): Akagi=\8+6,
Kaga=\8+9, Hiry =18+3, S ry =\8+3
[LOSSES] - losses in recent actions are tabulated and added to total.
^ - signifies a CAP mission that participated in no actions.
Appendix 10: Japanese Strike Rosters, Operations MI
and AL

The following tables show the organization and personnel involved in each
major Japanese airstrike carried out during Operations MI and AL.

Operation MI Rosters

Midway Strike Force1

Launch time: 0430
Overall commander: Lt. Tomonaga Joichi

Kobayashi Strike Force
Launch time: 1057
Overall commander: Lt. Kobayashi Michio


Tomonaga Strike Force
Launch time: 1330
Overall commander: Lt. Tomonaga Joichi

 Reconnaissance Flights

Tabulation of Japanese Aircraft Losses During the Battle of Midway,
June 4,1942

Operation AL Rosters

Dutch Harbor Strike Force2

Launch time: 0240, 3 June3
Overall commander: Lt. Shiga Yoshio


Makushin Bay Strike Force
Launch time: 0945, 3 June
 Overall commander: Lt. Shiga Yoshio

Dutch Harbor Strike Force
Launch time: 1430, 4 June
Overall commander: Lt. Shiga Yoshio


Appendix 11: Aleutians Force Distributions

The Aleutians Operation anticipated three major force organizations
(“Distributions”), to be undertaken at various points in the operation. In the
event, neither the second nor third distributions were undertaken, owing to the
turn of events around Midway itself. The three distributions are defined in
tabular format below, as taken from Japanese Monograph No. 88.

Notes
To be part of reinforcement from Midway Invasion Force.
Under maintenance at time of planning.
To be part of reinforcement from Midway Invasion Force.
To be part of reinforcement from Southern Force.
To be part of reinforcement from Submarine Force.8
There was no change contemplated.
To be part of reinforcement from Submarine Force (6 th Fleet).
Same as for 2nd Distribution.

Classification of Vessels
AO - Oiler
AP - Transport
CA - Heavy Cruiser
CL - Light Cruiser
CV - Fleet Carrier
CVL - Light Fleet Carrier
DD - Destroyer
Notes

CHAPTER 1: DEPARTURE
1 Throughout the text, we render Japanese names in their Japanese form of
family name first, given name second.
2 For the sake of convenience, we will often render such terms as Battleship
Division and Carrier Division in their shorter, Westernized
abbreviations-BatDiv, CarDiv, CruDiv, DesDiv, and so on. It should be
noted that the Japanese Navy did not use this nomenclature, referring to
Battleship Division 1 simply as Division 1.
3 It should be noted that many authors refer to Kido Butai as if there were
no other mobile striking forces in the Imperial Navy. In point of fact,
Kido Butai was a term of convenience rather than a formal organizational
title. The Battle of Midway would also witness the services of Dai-ni
(Second) Kido Butai- the force centered on Ry j and Juny , which
operated in the Aleutians. However, when we use Kido Butai in the text
without further specification, it will always be in reference to Nagumo’s
force.
4 As originally laid down, Akagi and Kaga were to have cost ¥24.7 million
and ¥26.9 million, respectively Each had completed roughly a third of
their construction cycles before work had been suspended on all capital
ships as a result of Japan’s signing the Washington Naval Treaty. As a
result, these two ships had likely consumed about ¥8 million apiece
before work was stopped. In 1922 the Diet voted the staggering
additional sum of ¥90 million to complete Akagi and her sister, Amagi
(and later Kaga), as aircraft carriers. As a result, it is likely that each of
the two big carriers of CarDiv 1 cost roughly ¥53 million ($36.45
million) to complete. This figure does include the very substantial sums
later allocated to refit and modernize each of these vessels in the mid-
1930s. Sources: Eric Lacroix in The Belgian Ship/over, Showa Zosenshi.
By way of comparison, HMS Nelson, built in 1922 at a cost of £7.5
million, cost about ¥47 million in adjusted 1928 prices. We are grateful
 to Dr. Warren Bailey for his help in supplying pertinent economic data
via his unpublished, “How Important Was Silver? Some Evidence on
Exchange Rate Fluctuations and Stock Returns in Colonial-Era Asia,”
Cornell University, February 25, 2002.
5 Akagi had been laid down six months after Kaga, but was commissioned
almost a year sooner.
6 Abe Zenji, in e-mail to Michael Wenger, 5/6/2002.
7 Fukui Shizuo, Japanese Naval Vessels Illustrated, 1869–1945, vol. 3
(Tokyo: KK Best Sellers, 1982), p. 66.
8 Indeed, it is arguable whether the Pearl Harbor raid could have even been
attempted had they been absent from Japan’s force structure. Mark
Peattie, Sunburst: The Rise of Japanese Naval Air Power, 1909–1941
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001), p. 61.
9 The first invasion attempt, launched by a distinctly second-string
Japanese naval flotilla, had ended in a humiliating retreat, because the
tiny Marine garrison sank two old Japanese destroyers.
10 Kaga had run aground at Palau on 9 February 1942. Although she had
participated in the operations around Java, as well as the Port Darwin
raid, her damage was considered serious enough that she was sent back
to Japan for a proper dry-docking at Sasebo on 27 March. It is very likely
that she had her bottom scraped and repainted at this time, thereby
ensuring her ability to operate at her best speed in the upcoming Midway
operation.
11 Arthur Marder, in the second volume of his Old Friends, New Enemies,
makes it clear that the effects on the morale of the Eastern Fleet were far
reaching and pervasive throughout the entire chain of command. Arthur
Marder, Old Friends, New Enemies, The RojalNavy and the Imperial
Japanese Navy, Volume II: The Pacific War, 1942–1945, Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1990, pp. 148–49.
12 Robert Barde, The Battle of Midway: A Study in Command, Ph.D.
Thesis, University of Maryland, 1971, pp. 15–16.
13 For characterizations of Nagumo, we draw primarily on Mitsuo Fuchida,
Midwaj: The Battle that DoomedJapan (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute
Press, 1955); Gordon Prange, Miracle at Midwaj (New York: Penguin
Books, 1982); Matome Ugaki, Fading Victory (Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1991); David Evans and Mark Peattie, Kaigun:
Strategy, Tactics and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887–
1941 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997); Tameichi Hara,
Japanese Destroyer Captain (New York: Ballantine Books, 1961); and
 John Prados, Combined Fleet Decoded (New York: Random House,
1995). We are also extremely grateful to Mr. Daniel Rush, U.S. Navy, for
his reminiscences of personal conversations with Nagumo’s youngest
son, Dr. Nagumo Shinji, in a series of e-mails to Jonathan Parshall dated
5/27–6/3/2001.
14 Barde, p. 52.
15 For characterizations of Kusaka, we draw primarily on Fuchida, Prange,
and Ugaki.
16 Donald Goldstein and Katherine Dillon, The Pearl Harbor Papers
(Dulles, VA: Brasseys, 1993), p. 151.
17 Hiroyuki Agawa, The Reluctant Admiral (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1979), p.
193.
18 Letter from Lt. Louis Poisson Davis (USN) to commander, Destroyer
Squadron Eleven. 2 May 1923. Yamaguchi had visited Lieutenant Davis
on board Davis’s destroyer, USS Woodbury (DD309). Louis Poisson
Davis Papers, Collection No. 309, East Carolina University Manuscript
Collection, J. Y. Joyner Library. We are grateful to David Dickson for
making us aware of this collection.
19 Goldstein and Dillon, p. 330.
20 Ugaki, p. 141.
21 Ibid.
22 Goldstein and Dillon, p. 144.
23 Tone has been typically credited with five aircraft-three E13Ns and two
E8Ns. However, James Sawruk’s examinations of the available records
of the battle indicate that, in fact, Tone was missing one of her E13Ns.
This loss apparently occurred around the time of the Indian Ocean
operation in April 1942. E-mail from Sawruk to Parshall, 5/9/2001.
Source: Japanese Operational Records, Microfilm Reel One, hereafter
“JD-1.”
24 The pronunciation of Hodate’s given name is unclear, and might have
been Hodate Takeshi. We are grateful to Jean-Paul Masson for his
insights, derived from Geneki Kaigun Shikan Meibo (Active Navy
Officer Register).
25 Casualty figures developed from Sawachi Hisae, Midowei Kaisen;
Kiroku (Midway Naval Battle: A Record) (Tokyo: Bungei Shunju, 1986).

CHAPTER 2: GENESIS OF A BATTLE

1 Willmott, The Barrier and the Javelin: Japanese and Allied Pacific
Strategies, February to June 1942 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute
 Press, 1982), p. 117; Barde, p. 43.
2 Prange, p. 28; Willmott, Barrier and the Javelin, p. 117.
3 Both H. P. Willmott’s Barrier and the Javelin, and John Lundstrom’s The
First South Pacific Campaign (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press,
1976), greatly inform this section. We also draw upon Willmott’s
preceding volume, Empires in the Balance: Japanese and Allied Pacific
Strategies to April 1942 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1982),
Fuchida’s Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, Agawa’s The
Reluctant Admiral, and Ugaki, Fading Victory.
4 For characterizations of Yamamoto, we draw primarily upon Agawa;
Fuchida; Prange; Ugaki; Willmott, Barrier and the Javelin; “Isoroku
Yamamoto: Alibi of a Navy” in The Great Admirals: Command at Sea,
1587-1945, ed. Jack Sweetman (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press,
1997); Evans and Peattie; and Prados.
5 Ugaki, p. 13; Prange, p. 285.
6 Ugaki, p. 36.
7 John Stephan, Hawaii Under the Rising Sun (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 1984), p. 95.
8 Prange, p. 29.
9 Willmott, Barrier and the Javelin, p. 39.
10 Ugaki, p. 12.
11 Ibid., p. 40.
12 Lundstrom, First South Pacific Campaign, p. 41; Willmott, Barrier and
the Javelin, p. 43.
13 Willmott, Barrier and the Javelin, p. 42.
14 Stephan, p. 82.
15 Ugaki, p. 75.
16 Ibid., p. 75.
17 Ibid., pp. 79–80.
18 Stephan, p. 81. Combined Fleet staff officers Kuroshima and Watanabe
had been given responsibility for examining this possibility by
Yamamoto.
19 Ibid., p. 82.
20 Ibid., p. 97.
21 Stephan, p. 98.
22 Barde, p. 29. Tomioka’s father had been a vice admiral and chief of
naval operations during the Russo-Japanese War. His grandfather had
been a naval constructor. A 1917 graduate of Etajima, Tomioka had
subsequently personally received a sword from Emperor Hirohito for
 being the top graduate in his class at the Naval War College in 1930. He
was clearly destined for flag rank.
23 Stephan, pp. 98–99.
24 Ibid., p. 99.
25 Ibid., p. 99.
26 Ibid., p. 100.
27 Ibid, p. 100; Willmott, Barrier and the Javelin, p. 42.
28 Ugaki, pp. 79–80.
29 Ibid., pp. 79–80.
30 Willmott, Barrier and the Javelin, p. 42.
31 Ibid., p. 93.
32 Japan, Boeicho Boeikenshujo Senshibu (originally, Boeicho
Boeikenshujo Senshishitsu), also Senshi Sosho (war history) series.
Asagumo Shimbunsha. Midowei Kaisen (Battle of Midway), vol. 43,
1971, pp. 29–30.
33 Willmott, Barrier and the Javelin, p. 49.
34 Lundstrom, First South Pacific Campaign, p. 43.
35 Robert B. Edgertson, Warriors of the Rising Sun-A History of the
Japanese Military (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), p. 275.
36 Lundstrom, First South Pacific Campaign, p. 43; Willmott, Barrier and
the Javelin, p. 46.
37 Willmott, Barrier and the Javelin, p. 52.
38 Osamu Tagaya, Mitsubishi Type 1 Rikko ’Betty’ Units of World War 2,
Osprey Combat Aircraft Series, no. 22 (Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing
Ltd, 2001), pp. 35–37; Lundstrom, First South Pacific Campaign, pp.
33–34.
39 Willmott, Barrier and the Javelin, pp. 57–58.
40 Ibid., pp. 59–63.
41 Lundstrom, First South Pacific Campaign, pp. 41–42.
42 In fact, Saratoga (not Lexington) had been torpedoed on 11 January
1942, sending her stateside for repairs.
43 Japanese Monograph No. 93, p. 12. She was, in fact, operating with the
British in support of the Home Fleet in the Atlantic.
44 Ibid., p. 12. Ranger was judged unusable for combat operations by the
Americans.
45 Ugaki, p. 75.
46 Ibid., pp. 79–80.
47 Japanese Monograph No. 93. “Midway Operations May-June 1942.”
Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 1947, p. 11, states that the
 Americans were estimated to have fifty-six aircraft of various types
there.
48 Ibid., p. 2.
49 At the height of their preparations for the battle, even the Americans
never based more than about 125 aircraft (including flying boats) at
Midway, which filled the base to bursting.
50 Stephan, p. 111.
51 Willmott, Barrier and the Javelin, p. 72.
52 Agawa, p. 297; Fuchida, p. 65.
53 Senshi Sosho, p. 95; Stephan, p. 112; Ugaki, p. 109.
54 Willmott, Barrier and the Javelin, p. 73.
55 Barde, p. 34.
56 Japanese Monograph No. 88. “Aleutian Naval Operations, March 1942-
February 1943,” Department of the Army, 1947, pp. 6–7.
57 Ibid., p. 7.
58 Stephan, p 112.
59 Ibid., p. 112.
60 Ibid., pp. 112–13.

CHAPTER 3: PLANS
1 American forces on the island of Corregidor, in the middle of Manila
Bay, would hold out until May.
2 Willmott, Barrier and the Javelin, p. 169.
3 Ugaki, pp. 83–84.
4 Stephan, p. 114.
5 Prados, p. 289.
6 Stephan, p. 114.
7 Ibid., p. 115; Edgertson, p. 275.
8 Senshi Sosho, pp. 92–95.
9 Stephan, p. 117. The original operational order (Dairikushi no. 1159)
gave notification to Seventh and Second Divisions to prepare for the
invasion. These two divisions were soon augmented with the Fifty-Third
Division, an independent engineer regiment, and a tank regiment.
10 Fuchida, pp. 78, 83–84. Samuel Morison, Coral Sea, Midwaj and
Submarine Actions, Maj 1942-August 1942 (Edison, NJ: Castle Books,
2001), pp. 77–78.
11 Japanese Monographs No. 93 and No. 88.
12 Japanese Monograph No. 88, p. 7.
13 Japanese Monograph No. 93, p. 4.
14 United States Strategic Bombing Survey [Pacific], Naval Analysis
Division. Interrogations of Japanese Officials, vols. 1 and 2, 1946, Nav-
13, interview with Watanabe Yasuji.
15 Senshi Sosho, p. 117.
16 For the remainder of this section, Tokyo time is used, which is a day
later than the local time of the objectives themselves (which were all
located across the international date line). To find Midway local time,
twenty-one hours behind, simply subtract one day (i.e., twenty-four
hours), then add three hours forward.
17 Senshi Sosho, p. 96. We are grateful to John Lundstrom for pointing out
this key fact.
18 Ibid., p. 121.
19 Japanese Monograph No. 88, p. 9
20 Ibid., p. 3.
21 Ibid., p. 32.
22 Ibid., p. 16.
23 Monograph No. 88, p. 10.
24 The proper designation of this aircraft is the Type 99 Carrier Bomber.
However, for the sake of familiarity to American readers, we will use the
term “dive-bomber” when describing this aircraft.
25 Monograph No. 88, p. 15.
26 Ibid., pp. 16, 20.
27 Ibid., p. 21.
28 Ibid., pp. 21–22.
29 Ibid., pp. 23–25.
30 It should be noted that the operational orders for Operation AL were
issued after the Battle of Coral Sea; thus the anticipated use of Zuikaku,
and not her more badly damaged sistership Sh kaku. It seems unlikely
that the original AL plan included either member of CarDiv 5, as both
carriers were originally designated for operations with Nagumo’s First
Striking Force at Midway.
31 Senshi Sosho, p. 119. Given that the inclusion of CarDiv 5 in the attack
formation would have raised the number of initial attacking aircraft in the
dawn strike to more than 160, the anticipated need for a single strike may
not have been far wrong.
32 Ibid., p. 119.
33 Barde, p. 28.
34 Senshi Sosho, p. 186.
35 Japanese Monograph No. 93, p. 8.
36 Paul Dull, A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy 1941–1945
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1978), p. 138.
37 Senshi Sosho, p. 118.
38 Prados, p. 283; Willmott, Barrier and the Javelin, p. 88.
39 Willmott, Barrier and the Javelin, p. 93; Prange, p. 31.
40 Senshi Sosho, p. 106; Monograph No. 93, p. 24.
41 This is not stated directly in Senshi Sosho, but it is supported by the map
of a subsequent Combined Fleet map exercise (pp. 117–18) in which the
Red forces (American) were given a Main Body in addition to a mobile
force of carriers. Given that it was Combined Fleet staff (likely Admiral
Ugaki himself) that scripted these exercises, it is reasonable to assume
that the force allocations for the war game mirrored the Japanese vision
of how the U.S. Navy would likely respond. We are grateful to Osamu
Tagaya for his insights into these matters.
42 Fuchida, p. 79.
43 Lundstrom, First South Pacific Campaign, pp. 124–25; Willmott,
Barrier and the Javelin, p. 82.
44 For a general discussion of prewar Japanese tactics vis-a-vis the decisive
battle, see Evans and Peattie, pp. 273–98.
45 This figure includes CarDiv 5’s two carriers.
46 “An Intimate Look at the Japanese Navy,” Donald Goldstein and
Katherine Dillon, The Pearl Harbor Papers (Dulles, VA: Brassey’s,
1993), p. 325.
47 Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Samuel Griffith, trans. (Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press, 1963), pp. 97–98.
48 Ugaki, p. 100.
49 Monograph No. 93, p. 20.
50 The exact composition of CruDiv 7’s air group at this time is unclear. It
seems unlikely that any of the ships were operating more than one apiece
of the newer E13A floatplanes, which were in short supply within the
fleet as a whole at this time. Instead, CruDiv 7 was relying primarily on
the older, slower Kawanishi E7K Type 94. However, while slower than
the E13A, the E7K still had a very respectable range (over 1,000 nm),
making it perfectly usable for long-range scouting missions. It was
certainly a far superior platform to the short-ranged Type 95 spotting
aircraft, which composed ten of the fourteen scouting aircraft carried by
Nagumo’s battleships and cruisers during the battle. Message from James
Sawruk to Parshall, March 18, 2003. Source JD-1.
51 This includes the aircraft of the 6th Air Group (6th Kokutai), which were
 to be ferried by Nagumo’s carriers to Midway. The composition of this
unit is discussed in more detail later.
52 We are grateful to John Lundstrom for pointing this out.
53 Kaga, having been damaged in February, had returned to Japan for
repairs during late March.
54 Juny ’s sister, Hiy , who shared her sister’s limitations, would be
available at the end of July 1942. However, the two ships were inferior in
many ways to standard fleet carriers.
55 Again, the Japanese were assuming that Lexington had been sunk. The
carrier USS Ranger was not considered combat worthy by the USN, but
is included here for the sake of formality

CHAPTER 4: ILL OMENS

1 Lundstrom, First South Pacific Campaign, pp. 76–77.
2 Ibid., pp. 75–76.
3 Ryukaku was considered to be a third unit of the Sh kaku class.
4 Lundstrom, First South Pacific Campaign, p. 84.
5 Ugaki, pp. 118–19.
6 Barde, p. 43.
7 Ibid., p. 43. It should be noted that Nagasawa was reporting this
secondhand, as he was with Takagi’s forces in the Coral Sea when these
particular exercises were held.
8 Ibid., p. 44.
9 Ibid., p. 53.
10 Goldstein and Dillon, p. 348; Senshi Sosho, p. 90. We are grateful to
Osamu Tagaya for his insights into this matter.
11 Fuchida, pp. 91–92; also, Ugaki’s diary divulges nothing but trivialities
regarding the map exercises. No mention is made of any of the
operational principles being played out or of his role in the exercises.
12 Prange, p. 35. This statement came to Prange via Watanabe’s statement
to him in 1964.
13 Willmott, Barrier and the Javelin, p. 112.
14 Ibid., p. 112.
15 Ugaki, p. 141; Prange, p. 36. This statement came to Prange via
Watanabe’s statement to him in 1964.
16 Prange, p. 36.
17 Ugaki, p. 122.
18 Walter Lord, Incredible Victory (New York: HarperCollins, 1967), p.
11.
19 Sh kaku was, in fact, only in dry dock until 27 June, and was
operational by 12 July.
20 Willmott, Barrier and the Javelin, p. 101.
21 Lundstrom, The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl
Harbor to Midway. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1984), p. 183.
22 E-mail from James Sawruk to Parshall, January 27, 2002. Source: JD-1.
23 Vice Admiral Mikawa Gun’ichi’s stunning victory at the Battle of Savo
Island (9 August 1942), for instance, was pulled off with a scratch unit
composed of literally whatever units had been at hand in Rabaul and the
Shortlands.
24 Japanese Monograph No. 93, p. 12.
25 Ibid. The basis for Japanese assumptions regarding “converted carriers”
in the American inventory is far from clear, as there were none. The vast
American shipbuilding program had yet to begin churning out carriers-
converted or otherwise-in significant numbers.
26 Barde, pp. 49–50.
27 The Nagumo Report, p. 2, cites the Americans as having four squadrons
at Midway. The American translation assumes that a squadron would be
twelve planes, but it is by no means clear that this was actually the case,
because the closest Japanese equivalent to an American squadron, the
hikotai, was at this point in the war usually eighteen aircraft, although
unit composition varied. Source: Nairei Teiyo (Manual of Military Secret
Orders). Translation of Captured Japanese Document, Item #613 (S-
1193), July 20, 1943, National Archives, Washington, D.C., pp. 1–3.
Akagis translated detailed action report, contained in “The Midway
Operation: DesRon 10, Mine Sweep Div 16, CV Akagi, CV Kaga, CVL
S ry , and CVL Hiry .” Extract translation from DOC No. 160985B-
MC 397.901, p. 4a, lists American strength as being two chutai of patrol
planes, two chutai plus one plane of Army bombers, and two chutai of
fighter planes. The American translators of this report erroneously
ascribed a chutai as being four aircraft, which is too low. Depending on
one’s definition of a chutais composition (usually nine aircraft), an
estimate obtains of between thirty-seven and fifty-five aircraft, the latter
being the most likely.
28 Japanese Monograph No. 93, p. 12.
29 Monograph No. 88, p. 11.
30 This was Northern Naval Force Order No. 24. Monograph No. 88, p. 32.
The Nagumo Report is also explicit in its mention of the difficulties
associated with orders being cut at the last minute.
 31 Edwin Layton, And I Was There (New York: William Morrow, 1985),
pp. 423–33.
32 Monograph No. 88, pp. 34–38.
33 Monograph No. 88, pp. 37–38; Monograph No. 93, p. 27.
34 Senshi Sosho, pp. 117–18. We are grateful to Osamu Tagaya for his
insight into these matters.
35 Ibid., pp. 119–21. We are grateful to John Lundstrom for his insight into
these matters.
36 American Ultra intercepts of both Akagi and S ry indicate that the
latter may have been involved in ferrying elements of the 23rd Air
Flotilla (23rd Koku Sentai ) at this time. Although not explicitly
mentioned by the sources, it is possible that S ry was pressed into
service as a replacement for the recently sunk seaplane carrier Mi^uho,
which was originally slated for the task. Ultra placed S ry in the
vicinity of Truk as late as 22 May. Given the normal five-day transit time
from Truk to Kure, it would not be surprising that she would not have
been able to make it back to Kure in time to reprovision and then sortie
for Midway as planned on the 26th. In a similar vein, on 16 May, Ultra
also noted the change of CarDiv 2’s flag from S ry to Hiry the
previous day, which may have been associated with Sdryu’s
unanticipated ferrying duties. (Source: Ultra Intercepts- Akagi and S ry ,
May 16–22, 1942.)
37 Monograph No. 93, p. 27.
38 Senshi Sosho, pp. 119–21.
39 Monograph No. 88, p. 38.
40 Goldstein and Dillon, p. 349.

CHAPTER 5: TRANSIT
1 Goldstein and Dillon, p. 211.
2 Ibid., p. 211.
3 Ibid., pp. 180, 213.
4 Ibid., pp. 186–95.
5 Fuchida, p. 104; Prange, p. 95.
6 John Keegan, The Face of Battle (London: Penguin Books, 1992), pp.
302–3.
7 Goldstein and Dillon, p. 328.
8 Tohmatsu Haruo’s essay on Japanese perceptions of the Pearl Harbor
attack, in H. P. Willmott’s Pearl Harbor (with Tohmatsu Haruo and W.
Spencer Johnson, London: Cassell, 2001), pp. 178–80, presents a
 perceptive treatment of this emotionally charged and internally
contradictory topic.
9 Willmott is scathingly critical of this paradox. Indeed, the prospect of
somehow “solving” the war in China by adding two vastly more
widespread and complex conflicts to the docket is one that is difficult to
comprehend.
10 Account of IKozu Naoji, in Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook,
Japan at War: An Oral History (New York: The New Press, 1992), p.
318.
11 Sakai, SaburO, Martin Caidin, and Fred Saito. Samurai! (New York:
Sutton, 1957; Reprint, Bantam Books, 1975), pp. 7–9.
12 Gordon Prange, At Dawn We Slept (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), pp.
280–81; Willmott, Haruo, and Johnson, Pearl Harbor, p. 60.
13 Prados, p. 137.
14 All of the oilers were relatively new units, capable of between 16.5 and
19.0 knots. Source: Roger Jordan, The World’s Merchant Fleets, 1939.
The Particulars and Wartime Fates of 6,000 Ships (Annapolis, MD:
Naval Institute Press, 1999).
15 Bureau of Aeronautics, Air Technical Intelligence Group, Report #1, p.
2. This report, based on a postwar interview of Akagis captain Aoki
TaijirO, provided many unique insights on Japanese operations.
Additional details on Japanese refueling techniques are found in the diary
of Rear Admiral Chigusa Sadao, in Goldstein and Dillon, p. 177.
Chigusa, who was executive officer of the destroyer Akigumo during the
Pearl Harbor attack, kept a very detailed journal of the refueling activities
made by that ship during that operation.
16 The U.S. Navy used side-by-side fueling almost exclusively by the late
1930s. Thomas Wildenberg, Gray Steel and Black Oil: Fast Tankers and
Replenishment at Sea in the U.S. Navy, 1912–1992 (Annapolis, MD:
Naval Institute Press, 1996), pp. 31–38, 130–34. The drawbacks to in-
line refueling were low pumping rates (since only one hose could be
used), particularly if the fueling hose was brought in contact with the
ocean, since the cool water had a tendency to increase viscosity of the oil
in the fuel line, thereby creating difficulties. Given that Japanese
warships were not apparently fitted with specialized tension engines to
keep the guideline and fuel line above the surface of the water, it is likely
that they suffered from this problem.
17 This is derived from S ry ’s detailed action report of the battle, which
specifies that she had aerial patrol duty on May 27 and 31, i.e., every four
 days. S ry action report, WDC160985, p. 16.
18 A.T.I.G. Report #2, p. 4.
19 This is not true of the USN’s new TBF Avenger, though, which was just
being introduced into service.
20 There has been some speculation that there was a specially modified
variant of the Type 97 that had greater range and that was used in the
carrier reconnaissance role. However, research for this book has
indicated that there was no such aircraft. Instead, it was standard practice
for combat-loaded Type 97s not to fill the outboard 225-liter wing fuel
tanks, so as to facilitate the aircraft’s takeoff from the carrier. Type 97s
on reconnaissance missions typically carried no ordnance, but they did
carry the extra 450 liters of fuel, giving them a longer range. Source:
HyOdO Nisohachi monograph for Parshall.
21 It has usually been assumed that two D4Y were present on board S ry ,
and that one was lost en route to the battlefield, or shortly before S ry
sortied from Kure, since it did not participate in the actions there. This is
the opinion of Senshi Sosho. However, it should be noted that there are
no operational records for the second plane, so it is possible that the
second aircraft was never shipped at all. Source: JD-1 reel, S ry
detailed action report.
22 John Lundstrom’s The First Team, pp. 182–85, and Mark Peattie’s
Sunburst: The Rise of Japanese Naval Air Power, 1909–1941, pp. 135–
37, discuss these issues in greater detail than we will do so here.
Lundstrom’s work is also highly recommended for its comprehensive
examination of air-to-air combat during the battle.
23 E-mail from Michael Wenger, February 2, 2002. According to Wenger,
an expert on the Indian Ocean operations of Kido Butai, this change may
have been implemented between the raid on Port Darwin and the
subsequent attack on Tjilatjap. Source: Senshi Sosho, vol. 26 (Indian
Ocean Operations).
24 Many of our comments in this regard draw heavily from Wayne P.
Hughes’s Fleet Tactics: Theory and Practice (Annapolis, MD: Naval
Institute Press, 1986), an enlightened, eminently readable, and highly
recommended work on the matter of naval doctrine and tactics.
25 Ibid., p. 28.
26 Evans and Peattie’s Kaigun remains the best source in English to date
regarding these matters.
27 Peattie, p. 149.
28 Ibid., p. 151.
29 Kusaka remarked on the usage of two attack waves at Pearl Harbor as
follows, “The reason for dividing the air attack force into two waves was
the fact that all planes could not be launched in one wave due to the
space and the take off range [sic] of the carriers.” Goldstein and Dillon,
p. 157. In our opinion, “take off range” is very likely a mistranslation of
“takeoff length,” referring to the limited run-off room forward on the
carriers. The actual range of Japanese aircraft or carriers had no relation
whatsoever to the number of aircraft in the deck spot.
30 Rear Admiral Murr Arnold, in a letter to John Lundstrom dated 9 April
1972, describes how USS Yorktown, in a training mission in the spring of
1941, spotted and launched her full air group of seventy-three aircraft
(four eighteen-plane squadrons plus the group commander) with full
ordnance loads, i.e., torpedoes on the torpedo aircraft (TBDs) and 1,000-
lb bombs on the dive-bombers (SBDs), and all in a single cycle. Arnold,
who was CO of VB-5 at the time, was flying the lead SBD, which was
spotted just behind the fighters. This exercise was done to achieve
training for all pilots, even though it was realized that war requirements
for search planes, combat air patrol (CAP), and antisubmarine patrol
would probably never permit such a 100 percent launch of the air group.
31 Ugaki, p. 143.
32 It should be noted that at the Battle of Coral Sea, Sh kaku and Zuikaku
in some cases apparently eschewed the usage of deckload strikes, instead
spotting mixed strike packages. Their larger flight decks, particularly in
comparison with the ships of CarDiv 2, apparently made this a more
attractive option.
33 Nagumo Report, pp. 5–6; Japanese Monograph No. 93, p. 27.
34 Senshi Sosho, vol. 26, pp. 591, 624. We are grateful to Michael Wenger
for his insights on Kido Butais training prior to the Indian Ocean
operation.
35 The composition of the dive-bomber units was as follows:
Akagi: Eighteen pilots (fourteen Pearl Harbor vets plus four new pilots)
Kaga: Eighteen pilots (eleven Pearl Harbor vets plus seven new pilots)
Hiry : Eighteen pilots (thirteen Pearl Harbor vets plus five new pilots)
S ry : Seventeen pilots (twelve Pearl Harbor vets plus five new pilots) plus
two D4Y crew members, who presumably were veterans, because they had
served with S ry previously.

Grand total: seventy-two pilots, of which at least fifty (and probably

fifty-one), were Pearl Harbor veterans. We are grateful to James Sawruk for
his insights into these matters.
36 The composition of the attack plane units was as follows:
Akagi: Eighteen pilots (all Pearl Harbor vets)
Kaga: Twenty-eight pilots (twenty-one Pearl Harbor vets plus seven
new pilots)
Hiry : Eighteen pilots (fifteen Pearl Harbor vets plus thee new pilots)
S ry : Eighteen pilots (sixteen Pearl Harbor vets plus two new pilots)
Grand total: eighty-two pilots, of which seventy were Pearl Harbor
veterans. We are grateful to James Sawruk for his insights into these
matters.
37 We are grateful to Allan Alsleben and James Sawruk for their insights
on the arcane areas of Japanese aircraft production during the war. The
following section regarding Japanese carrier air complements is drawn
heavily from their e-mail communications to Jon Parshall, January 22–
24, 2002.
38 Source: USSBS, Nav. 50, pp. 202–6, and supplemental figures provided
by Allan Alsleben.
39 Figures on Japanese aircraft production are to be found in USSBS 22,
Nav 50, and also wartime reports from the Japanese Munitions Ministry,
which were forwarded to me by Allan Alsleben.
40 Kido Butais Pearl Harbor actual aircraft complements are an arcane
debate unto themselves, but for the purposes of argument, we use the
following figures: Akagi eighteen plus three VF, eighteen VB, twenty-
seven VT (sixty-three active aircraft plus three spare aircraft); Kaga
twenty-one VF, twenty-seven VB, twenty-seven VT (seventy-five
aircraft); S ry eighteen plus three VF, eighteen plus three VB, eighteen
plus three VT (fifty-four active aircraft plus nine spare aircraft); Hiry
eighteen plus three VF, eighteen plus three VB, eighteen plus three VT
(fifty-four active aircraft plus nine spare aircraft). Willmott, Pearl
Harbor, pp. 185–89. Spare aircraft were normally kept disassembled and
stowed in storage spaces on board ship. In the case of Hiry and S ry
this was mandatory-there was simply no place to put more aircraft in the
hangars.
41 Determining the exact number of aircraft carried by Kido Butai into
battle in June 1942 is not an easy task. Much of the information
contained in the older secondary accounts is grossly incorrect, and even
the information found in the official Japanese war history series leaves
much to be desired. However, on the basis of the original carrier action
reports and other supporting documents, it is possible to present what we
 believe to be a definitive accounting of the matter that supersedes all
previously published histories of the battle.
42 Recent research by James Sawruk has indicated that these two spare
dive-bombers may have been two aircraft from S ry displaced to make
way for the two prototype D4Y being carried. SdryWs hangars were the
most cramped of the four carriers, and computer-generated stowage
diagrams of her hangars strongly indicate that carrying twenty assembled
dive-bombers, in addition to her augmented fighter group, was out of the
question. Temporarily moving these two aircraft to Kaga would have
allowed them to be carried fully assembled, making for an easier transfer
back to S ry after the battle. It seems logical that this would have been
seen as preferable to disassembling the aircraft and storing them on board
S ry . However, it is likely that their aircrews were not on board Kaga,
meaning that they could not have been used in the battle (unless Kaga
had spare aircrews). However, the possibility also remains that these two
aircraft were not from S ry at all, but were merely Type 99s intended
for usage by 6th Ku on Midway.
43 Experimental Model 13 Carrier Bomber (D4Y1) as reconnaissance
aircraft. Preproduction aircraft models were not given a Type number
until they were formally accepted into service. Until that time, they were
referred to by their experimental shi-number, which indicated the date
the initial contract for the aircraft was let. The D4Y was accepted for
service as the Type 2 Carrier Bomber in July 1942.
44 Senshi Sosho, p. 238.
45 6th Ku’s establishment on 20 May 1942 was composed of fifty-six Zero
pilots, six C5M Type 98 reconnaissance plane pilots, and ten recon
observers. Of the Zero pilots, twenty-five were classified as “Class A”
pilots in terms of their training, with the remaining thirty-one being
“Class C.” All of them were probably capable of taking off from a
carrier, but it is unknown how many could perform a carrier landing. The
“Class C” pilots almost certainly could not have performed a carrier
landing. Source: “Private Memo of Captain Shibata Fumio,” held in
personal collection of James Sawruk.
46 Willmott, Pearl Harbor, pp. 185–89.
47 Juny and Ry j ’s kodochoshos (detailed air group reports), located in
JSDF Archives, held in private collection of James Sawruk. It is probable
that there were additional 6th Ku aviators on board Juny as well, but
they may not have been carrier qualified, and hence were unable to
participate in carrier air operations.
48 There is a certain amount of speculation involved in the numbers of
aircraft carried on board ship, in that they are based on the numbers of
pilots who are known to have actually flown a mission, according to the
ship’s kodochoshos. Given the already understrength nature of these air
groups, it is likely that both Juny and Ry j were operating every
aircraft they had on board.
49 Ry j had gone to war with a fighter unit flying obsolete A5M4 Type 96
fighters. Despite having been heavily involved in operations in the
southern region, she had been forced to fight with these for the first five
months of the conflict. Ry j had finally replaced her Type 96s with new
Zeros when she returned to Kure on 23 April, meaning that her fighter
pilots had been using their new mounts for about a month. However, her
attack aircraft were still a mixed bag of B5N2 and the older B5N1 Type
97 attack aircraft. At the time of Midway, against a nominal complement
of forty-two aircraft, she had only thirty aircraft on board-twelve Zeros
and eighteen Type 97s-and a similar number of pilots. This counts only
the pilots named on her official rosters. However, her kodochoshos make
it clear that she never operated more than nine Zeros and eighteen Type
97s at any one time during the battle-a strong indication as to her
depleted air strength. Some sources list Ry j as carrying six aircraft of
6th Ku as well. However, noted researcher James Sawruk saw no
evidence of this in her war records, and indeed such a total would raise
the number of 6th Ku aircraft nominally involved in the battle to thirty-
nine-an odd number not usually associated with standard air group
organizational structures. Source: Juny and Ryu/d’s kodochoshos
(detailed air group reports), located in JSDF Archives, held in private
collection of James Sawruk.
50 Zuih was probably the worst off of the lot in terms of aircraft. She was
also operating a mixed air group of six Type 96 fighters; six Zeros, which
had just been put on board; and twelve Type 97 attack aircraft during
Midway. Not only that, but her air wing at this time was composed of
instructor pilots scraped up from various training commands. (Maru
Special #38, March 1980, p. 8. We are grateful to Allan Alsleben for this
insight.) Her sister, Shoho, had been sunk the month before at Coral Sea,
carrying just nine Zeros, four Type 96 fighters, and six Type 97 torpedo
bombers-a pitifully small contingent for a carrier capable of carrying
thirty aircraft. Source: Katsura Rihei, Kubo Zuih no Sogai, p. 60.
Courtesy James Sawruk.
CHAPTER 6: FOG AND FINAL PREPARATIONS
1 Lundstrom, First South Pacific Campaign, p. 150.
2 Layton, p. 408.
3 Lundstrom, First South Pacific Campaign, p. 150; Layton, p. 412.
4 Lundstrom, First South Pacific Campaign, p. 155.
5 Layton, pp. 421–22.
6 John Lundstrom, in Quarterdeck and Bridge: Two Centuries of American
Naval Leaders, ed. James Bradford (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute
Press, 1996), p. 337.
7 Prange, p. 104; Willmott, Barrier and the Javelin, pp. 302–5, 337;
Layton, pp. 409–25.
8 Layton, p. 425.
9 Lord, pp. 34–38.
10 We are grateful to U.S. Naval Historical Center historian Robert
Cressman for his clarification regarding Yorktown’s entry into dry dock.
11 Some VF-42 pilots and maintenance personnel remained on board. E-
mail from Robert Cressman, January 24, 2005.
12 Yorktown also carried three additional nonoperational aircraft; two F4F
and one TBD triced up in the hangar overhead.
13 Hornet technically had thirty-seven dive-bombers, but one was left
behind at Pearl Harbor, and another was lost en route to Point Luck.
14 Prange, pp. 65, 135.
15 We draw heavily on David Bergamini, Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy
(New York: William & Morrow Company, 1971), pp. 922–23.
16 Prange, p. 32.
17 Ibid., p. 32.
18 Orita Zenji and Joseph Harrington, I-Boat Captain (Canoga Park, CA:
Major Books, 1976), pp. 62–66.
19 Ibid., p. 62.
20 Lord, p. 44; Fuchida, p. 128.
21 Bergamini, p. 923.
22 Ibid.
23 Ugaki, p. 142.
24 Ugaki, p. 131; Fuchida, p. 110.
25 Ugaki, p. 131.
26 Willmott, Barrier and the Javelin, pp. 347–49.
27 Prange, p. 137.
28 Ugaki, p. 131.
29 Fuchida, p. 116.
30 Nagumo Report, p. 3.
31 Fuchida, p. 113, asserts that Akagis radio reception capability was
limited.
32 Operational History of Japanese Naval Communications, December
1941-August 1945 (Laguna Hills, CA: Aegean Park Press, 1985), p. 104.
33 Ibid., p. 256.
34 Ibid.
35 Lacroix, p. 518. Tone-class cruisers had two transmitting rooms, two
receiving rooms, two radio telephone rooms, and a radio direction-
finding room equipped with an RDF unit mounted atop the foremast.
36 Ibid., pp. 200–201.
37 Fuchida, p. 111; Ugaki, p. 131.
38 Interestingly, the centralized communications model used by the
Japanese at this point in the war was incapable of handling the
increasingly heavy demands placed on it by the war and was shifted to a
more decentralized model in June 1943. Operational History of Japanese
Naval Communications, pp. 46–47.
39 Akagi detailed action report, p. 4a. Extract Translation from DOC No.
160985B-MC 397.901. JD-1 reel.
40 Ugaki, p. 131.
41 It is true that Akagis logs do not reveal any knowledge of the attacks
against Tanaka’s Invasion Force (described shortly) that were to occur
the day before the battle. However, Kusaka indicated afterward that
Nagumo was aware that the Invasion Force had been discovered. Prange,
p. 176.
42 Ugaki, p. 131.
43 Ikari Yoshiro, Kaigun Kugisho (Tokyo: K jinsha, 1989), pp. 353–54.
We are grateful to Osamu Tagaya for supplying us with the actual
wording for these paragraphs.
44 Fog steaming conditions are described in Goldstein and Dillon, p. 185.
45 At least this is Fuchida’s assertion (p. 115). We are not convinced that
zigzagging would have been feasible as the weather continued to worsen.
46 Lord, p. 56. This practice may not have been as outlandish as it
appeared, as the Japanese typically wear slippers indoors and keep their
shoes near the entranceway of dwellings.
47 Operational History of Japanese Naval Communications, p. 41.
48 Fuchida, p. 116.
49 Operational History of Japanese Naval Communications, p. 41. Most
accounts have the turn itself occurring at 1030. We prefer the message
 syntax given in this source, because it fixes a definite time for the turn, as
well as giving all ships in the command adequate time to prepare for the
maneuver, which necessarily had to be accomplished under very
hazardous circumstances.
50 In fact, they were not. The Americans did not detect this transmission.
51 All Imperial Navy warships kept Tokyo time, regardless of what time
zone they were operating in. Midway was three hours ahead of Tokyo.
52 Fuchida, pp. 131–33.
53 USF-74, the standard U.S. naval doctrine of the same period, is silent on
the topic of two-phase searches.
54 “Research on Mobile Force Tactics” (Yokosuka #45, May 1943). This
doctrinal study prescribes a search with the first wave launched two
hours before dawn.
55 Message from James Sawruk to Parshall, June 1, 2001. Fuchida, p. 177,
commenting on Nagumo’s chances for a night battle, remarks, “It would
take more than good luck for our Force, with no radar and only one
night-scouting plane, to find and successfully engage this enemy.” The
night scout referred to is certainly Nagara’s, and other Japanese sources
indicate that E11As were used in this role by light cruiser DesDiv leaders
at this time.
56 Message to Parshall from James Sawruk, May 7, 2001. Japanese records
seem to indicate that one of Tone’s floatplanes may have been either
missing or out of service for some reason and was not used during the
battle. While these records are somewhat sketchy, it appears that Tone
only used four of her recon aircraft (counting both Type 95 and Type 0)
on 4 June.
57 We are grateful to James Sawruk and Eric Bergerud for sharing their
insights on this matter.
58 The reader will note that the American SBD scouting squadrons flew at
much higher altitudes, as per USF-74 doctrine.
59 We are grateful to James Sawruk, the guru of PBY operations during the
war, for his insights into these matters in an e-mail dated January 22,
2001.
60 Prange, p. 185.
61 Ibid., p 186.
62 Ibid., p. 176.
63 Goldstein and Dillon, p. 199.
64 Ibid, p. 212; USSBS Nav. No. 60, p. 252.
CHAPTER 7: MORNING ATTACK–0430–0600
1 From this point forward, we will refer to Kido Butais time in terms of
Midway local, so as to facilitate the comparison of this narrative’s events
with those found in other Western accounts of the battle.
2 Civil twilight (the first moment when the horizon ought to be discernable)
was at 0423 local that morning.
3 The wake-up time is somewhat speculative, based on working backward
from the known task list that had to be accomplished before takeoff.
4 Goldstein and Dillon, p. 191.
5 Ugaki, p. 134.
6 Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change
and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House,
1988), p. 391.
7 There were exceptions to this practice. It is clear that the carriers of Kido
Butai used deck parks during their transit to the Pearl Harbor raid-their
normal air wings having been strengthened to the point that it was
impossible to stow all their aircraft below In that case, the Japanese had
carried those aircraft slated for their first-wave attacks on the flight deck.
CarDiv 5 also used deck parks during the Indian Ocean raids.
8 Hasegawa Toichi, Nihon no Kokubokan (Japanese aircraft carriers)
(Tokyo: Guranpuri Shuppan, 1997), p. 157.
9 The correct launching brackets had presumably been attached on the
previous day as a result of the orders to the fleet. The same was likely
true for the tokaki on the Type 97 aircraft aboard CarDiv 1-having been
designated for the antiship strike, these planes would have been fitted
with the mounting hardware necessary to carry Type 91 torpedoes.
10 Hyodo Nisohachi, letter to Parshall, February 1, 2001.
11 The wings of its American counterpart, the SBD Dauntless, did not fold
at all.
12 We are grateful to aviation historian Hyodo Nisohachi for providing
much of the detailed information on carrier spotting and launch
procedures that is presented in this chapter.
13 David Dickson, “Fighting Flattops: The Sh kakus” Warship
International 1 (1977): p. 18.
14 Three cycles. Japanese elevators were electrically driven. Kaga’s three
elevators could move at thirty-five meters per minute at bow, at forty
m/m at amidships, at forty-four m/m at stern. These were relatively slow
speeds, compared to the fifty meters per minute of the Sh kaku-class
carriers. Hyodo, letter to Parshall, February 12, 2001, and Dickson, p. 18.
 The Lexington and Saratoga, contemporaries of Japan’s CarDiv 1,
suffered from similar problems with their lifts.
15 Unlike some American aircraft, early-war Japanese planes did not have
powered folding wings.
16 Unlike the Americans, Japanese carriers, even at the end of the war, did
not employ jeeps or other powered vehicles for flight deck spotting
purposes.
17 Senshi Sosho, p. 294; Kimata Jiro, Nihon no Kokubokan (“Japanese
Aircraft Carriers”), p. 267. It should be noted that there is no universal
agreement on the nature of this formation. ATIG Report No. 1, p. 2, and
USSBS Nav. No. 4, p. 1 (interview with Captain Aoki of Akagi )
describe a formation wherein the carriers are in two columns 2,000
meters apart, with division leaders separated from their division mate by
5,000 meters. Furthermore, Krishima is reported to be leading the heavy
units in the formation, with Haruna trailing. ATTG Report No. 2 and
USSBS interview Nav. No. 1, p. 1, given by Amagai Takahisa (Kaga’s
air officer) describes the same formation. However, it needs to be
understood that these particular ATIG and USSBS interviews were, in
fact, given on the same date, to a large group of USN officers. Thus,
these latter two sources are in essence the same statement, although
ATIG is more detailed in terms of its treatment of carrier operations.
Similarly, S ry ’s air officer, Commander Ohara, describes a formation
in Nav. No. 39, p. 167. However, both of the formations described in
these sources are more consistent with day steaming formations, rather
than those for conducting flight operations. It’s worth noting, too, that
both statements were confused with regards to which battleships were
present in the force in the first place, making it not unlikely that their
relative places in the formation may have been transposed as well. In
addition, Ohara’s diagram also shows oilers in the fleet train, which had
been detached well before reaching the objective. In the final analysis,
we give precedence to Senshi Sosho in this, as in most matters. It also
jibes with the Hawaii and Coral Sea operations, wherein the Japanese
typically kept a distance of at least 7,000 meters between their carriers.
18 Akagi battle report, pp. 8, 11, 25.
19 Willmott, Barrier and the Javelin, p. 372.
20 Conversation with Eric Bergerud, June 2, 2000; e-mail from Clint Bauer,
June 7, 2000. It is important to note that the warm-up of aircraft engines
occurred considerably before the aircrew manned their planes. This is a
correction to the existing Western record extant in such books as Lord
 and Prange, as well as Fuchida’s rendition of events.
21 American carriers, with their open-sided hangars, could warm up their
planes below the flight deck. This was a major contributor to faster deck
cycles aboard American carriers. In some cases, American aircraft were
warmed up, loaded on an elevator with the engines still running, taxied
under their own power onto the flight deck, and then took off directly.
Such an abbreviated takeoff cycle was impossible on British and
Japanese carriers.
22 Japanese carriers typically had only a single briefing room for their
aircrews.
23 Lord, p. 90, says that Genda had a cold. Other accounts maintain that he
actually had pneumonia.
24 The Japanese used the concept of a “Point Option”-the point in the
ocean where the carrier ought to be at any given time-in the same fashion
as the USN.
25 Many of the conventional Western accounts refer to the Japanese flight
decks as being floodlit during the morning’s launch, with the lights
supposedly turning “night into day” (Fuchida, p. 135), but this is
erroneous. While Japanese carriers did carry powerful searchlights, the
only lights on the flight deck routinely used during flight operations were
not “floodlights” per se, but rather lamps set flush with the flight deck.
These were intended to outline the deck and indicate important features,
such as the aft edge of the flight deck and the position of the landing
barriers. Floodlights would have required elevation above the flight deck,
and no such array of light platforms or fixtures are to be found on
detailed plans of Japanese aircraft carriers. Obviously, illuminating
oneself brightly in enemy waters hardly made good sense, hence the
hooding of the flight deck lights. The intensity of these lights could be
adjusted by a rheostat located at the air control station. ATIG Report No.
2, p. 5, and ATIG Report No. 5, pp. 2–3.
26 Each Japanese carrier aircraft carried an identifying tail code, the first
two letters of which specified the carrier division to which the plane
belonged. The issue of which tail codes were used by Hiry and S ry at
the Battle of Midway has been complicated by the change of CarDiv 2’s
flagship from S ry to Hiry in April of 1942. These issues are more
fully discussed in appendix 10.
27 While specifics of battle speeds for 1942 Kido Butai doctrine are
unavailable, according to 4sf Doctrine (promulgated on 27 November
1941 and probably similar to Kido Butai’s operational practices in this
 regard), battle speed 1 = eighteen knots; battle speed 2 = twenty knots;
battle speed 3 = twenty-two knots; battle speed 4 = twenty-four knots;
battle speed 5 = twenty-eight knots; maximum battle speed = maximum
speed of which ship is capable. It should be noted, however, that by
1944, Kido Butai doctrine gives the following battle speeds: 1 = twenty
knots, 2 = twenty-four knots, 3 = twenty-eight knots, 4 = thirty knots, 5 =
thirty-two knots, with no maximum battle speed listed. However, given
the relatively brisk wind in evidence on the morning of 4 June, there
would have been no need to launch at higher speeds than twenty-two
knots. Therefore, during the remainder of this book, we use 1942 4sf
battle speeds. We are grateful to David Dickson for his insights into these
matters.
28 “Battle Report of Battle of Midway,” p. 14. It is possible that the wind
was gusting, because a wind of 160 degrees would place it 30 degrees
from starboard on the force’s nominal heading of 130. This would
represent a rather large amount of crosswind for launch. It is likely that
the carriers deviated from their base course briefly to put the wind fine
across their bows during the few minutes needed for launching.
29 Japanese carrier action reports, WDC 160985B, pp. 6, 11, 14.
30 ATIG Report No. 5, p. 3.
31 Unlike their Western counterparts, Japanese carriers did not use
catapults. An underdeck, air-propelled catapult design was apparently
developed in 1935 (at about the time of Kaga’s refit), but was not
adopted owing to its complexity, and the belief at the time that such gear
was unnecessary. This lack of foresight would hamper Japanese carrier
operations using heavier aircraft as the war went on. ATIG Report No. 1,
p. 3, and ATIG Report No. 7, p. 1.
32 The authors learned a great deal about Japanese deck-spotting activities
by building accurate computer-aided spotting diagrams for the four
carriers. By scanning the photographic record and using the computer
diagrams to account for such factors as propeller clearance and the
creation of unbroken acceleration paths for the outboard planes to the
centerline, it was possible to determine how and where individual aircraft
were spotted on each of the carriers. Furthermore, the characteristics of
the carriers came more clearly into focus. Kaga’s low speed was a real
detriment to effective torpedo aircraft operation. Conversely, her
expansive flight deck, 100 feet in width, made it possible for her to spot
aircraft in comfort. Hiry , whose island was relatively further aft,
undoubtedly suffered from cramped conditions as strike sizes exceeded
 twenty-four aircraft. Zeros must have been crammed in all around her
island, and the relative narrowness of the flight deck meant that the
island and the mainmast just aft of it was a real hazard when a pilot
spotted on the port side of the flight deck began his acceleration toward
the centerline and then down the deck. In this sense, the S ry was
actually superior to her larger sister, in that her island was well forward,
and therefore created no complications for the spotting process.
33 ATIG Report No. 2, p. 5.
34 The exact number of planes spotted at this time remains speculation. It
would not have been unusual for a chutai of nine fighters to have been
spotted on each carrier. At a minimum, a shotai of three would have been
spotted and readied by each, so as to be available for a speedy takeoff if
needed.
35 PO1c Takahashi Toshio (pilot), Ens. Akamatsu Saku (observer), PO3c
Koyama Tomio (radioman).
36 The U.S. Mk. 13, by contrast, was eight knots slower (33.5 knots),
thereby ensuring that firing runs had to be made at short ranges and high
angles of interception. (Indeed, the faster carriers of CarDiv 2 could
literally outrun this weapon.) Worse, the American torpedo was limited
to a maximum drop height of fifty feet at 110 knots, thereby ensuring a
nearly suicidal attack profile for the American torpedo aircraft that would
carry it. The Type 91, by contrast, could be dropped from as high as
1,000 feet or as fast as 260 knots, although the Japanese considered a
drop height of 330 feet at 180 knots to be optimal. John Campbell, Naval
Weapons of World War Two (London: Conway Maritime Press, 1985), p.
159; U.S. Naval Technical Mission to Japan, “Japanese Torpedoes and
Tubes-Articles I, Ship and Kaiten Torpedoes,” Report O-01–2 (Hereafter
“NavTechJap O-01–2”), p. 8.
37 NavTechJap Report O-01–2, p. 12.
38 Letter from Hyodo to Parshall, March 12, 2001.
39 Ibid. There is some degree of speculation in this assertion. Even though
the Japanese did not expect enemy vessels in the area, they had to assume
the worst, meaning that a capital-ship depth setting was most likely
selected.
40 Confirmation of this point is to be found in the carrier records, which
make it clear that the flight decks were in very heavy use during the
morning, particularly from 0730 onward.
41 Yoshida Akihiko letter to Parshall, March 31, 2001.
42 Japanese doctrine of the time specified that capital ships (including
 heavy cruisers) could not be sunk by dive-bomber weapons, and that
torpedoes were to be used (Tagaya, communication to Parshall, August
10, 2004). The torpedo aircraft were about to take off when word came
back that the dive-bombers had, in fact, sunk the enemy cruisers. Given
that torpedoes could not be brought back aboard the ship once their plane
was launched, this timely message ended up saving CarDiv 5 from
wasting thirty-six precious torpedoes. We are grateful to Michael Wenger
for his insights on this matter.
43 Peattie, p. 145; Goldstein and Dillon, pp. 34–35.
44 Goldstein and Dillon, p. 35.
45 The pronunciation of Amari’s first name is unknown, and may well have
been Kiyoshi or Yoji. We appreciate James Sawruk’s insights on this
matter.
46 One of the reasons hinted at in some interviews with Japanese survivors
related to the authors by James Sawruk, is that a matter of “face”-perhaps
related to the incompetence of Tone’s catapult officer to properly launch
the craft, an unwillingness on the part of other enlisted members of the
crew to assist him (and thereby embarrass him), and a consequent delay
in making this failure known-may have been involved. However, neither
Sawruk nor the authors have been able to verify these details, and they
must therefore remain unsubstantiated, plausible as they may seem.
47 Interview with Iwao Konishi, former seaplane pilot aboard Chitose,
courtesy of John Bruning Jr. Bruning Collection, Hoover Institute.
48 Prange, p. 185.
49 Ibid., p. 185.
50 Account of Lt. Yasukuni Nagatomo, Hiry starboard gunnery officer, in
Sh gen Midowei Kaisen, pp. 212–27.
51 This plane, flown by Lt. Howard P. Ady, had sent a sighting report at
0534, indicating the presence of two Japanese carriers. Robert Cressman,
Steve Ewing et al., A Glorious Page in Our History: The Battle of
Midway (Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, 1990),
p. 59.
52 It remains one of the great mysteries of the battle as to what, exactly,
Tone’s No. 4 aircraft thought he was seeing when he made this
transmission. Senshi Sosho (p. 307) even goes so far as to aver that the
message was logged incorrectly, and that it was Tone’s No. 1 plane
(flying search line No. 3) that was transmitted. However, Senshi Sosho is
wrong on this point, because American radio intelligence picked up Tone
No. 4’s signal, as well as Amari’s particular call sign (MEKU 4), at
 exactly 0555. (HYPO Log, p. 499.) But even accounting for the fact that
this aircraft appears to have flown a badly distorted search route, he still
should have been some sixty to seventy-five miles north of whatever
strike aircraft the Americans were currently sending after Kido Butai. It
is possible that he saw an American PBY search plane, or perhaps more
than one, but he certainly didn’t see fifteen of them grouped in such a
manner.
53 Cressman et al., pp. 59–61.
54 Prange, p. 190.
55 Cressman et al., p. 60.
56 Prange, p. 190.
57 Cressman et al., p. 84.
58 Lundstrom, First Team, p. 332.

CHAPTER 8: A LULL BEFORE THE STORM–0600–0700

1 Ugaki, p. 129; Lacroix and Wells, pp. 775–76.
2 Recent works on the Imperial Japanese Navy have suggested that Hiry
actually carried an experimental set at Midway as well. However, this is
not true, and the topic is dealt with in appendix 8, “Japanese Radar at the
Battle of Midway.”
3 It is known that Japanese land-based Zero groups sometimes removed
their radios altogether.
4 Kaga air group report, p. 19.
5 Peattie, pp. 147–48.
6 Research on Mobile Force Tactics, p. 15, a document issued by the
Yokosuka Kokutai (which was the Imperial Japanese Navy’s think tank
for aerial doctrine) in August 1943, featured carriers protected by a circle
of destroyers. No distances were specified between the escorts and the
carrier, and there typically were six ships on the perimeter of the ring.
Cruisers and battleships were still not part of the tactical AA mix, with
the cruisers still being used in a scouting role.
7 The orders for her refit, according to her former gunnery officer in an
article in Maru magazine in the 1970s, had already been cut. We are
grateful to noted researcher and modeler Uchiyama Muttsuo for his
insights into this matter in a series of correspondences dated November
25, 2003.
8 Much of this discussion is based on John Campbell’s Naval Weapons of
World War II, pp. 178, 192–94. At least one source cites S ry as having
Type 91 as well, and that may well have been the case at the time of her
 launching. However, from the photographic record available, it appears
that she was equipped with Type 94 by the time of the outbreak of the
war.
9 At Midway, Yorktown and Enterprise were equipped with the older Mk.
33 fire-control system. The newer Hornet was equipped with Mk. 37. E-
mail from Cressman, January 25, 2005.
10 Campbell, p. 178.
11 Hyodo Nisohachi, essay on automatic weapons prepared for Jon
Parshall, May 1, 2002.
12 The newer Sh kaku and Zuikaku had the ability to direct four batteries
of two five-inch mounts apiece, which doubled the number of targets
their five-inch guns could engage.
13 “IJN Diversion Attack Force Doctrine (1–1–44).” Courtesy David
Dickson.
14 “USF 10A-Current Tactical Orders and Doctrine (2–1–44).”
15 These included an SBD lost while diving on Kaga and a B-26 shot down
by Akagi.
16 The Americans lost a minimum of six aircraft from crash landings on
June 4.
17 Senshi Sosho, vol. 29, p. 653. We are deeply grateful to Michael
Wenger, who shared excerpts from his forthcoming book on the Indian
Ocean campaign, for his insights into these matters.
18 Four Blenheims were shot down by the CAP, another was lost when it
ran into a returning Japanese air strike, one crash landed, and two more
were damaged. Seventeen British aircrew were killed. One Hiry Zero
was shot down. We are grateful to Mark Horan for his insights into this
action.
19 Senshi Sosho, vol. 29, p. 653.
20 Akagi Action Report, p. 6.
21 We thank Alan Zimm for positing this explanation of Amari’s actions.
22 Research by James Sawruk indicates that a VP-23 PBY piloted by James
J. Murphy had an encounter with a Japanese floatplane. Given the search
line of the PBY in question (336 degrees from Midway) and the time of
the encounter, it seems likely that the plane was Amari’s. The Japanese
aircraft ducked into clouds to avoid the PBY, which likewise declined to
pursue a fight. This evasive maneuver might also have disoriented
Amari’s pilot, causing him to fly his subsequent route incorrectly.
23 Senshi Sosho, p. 309.
CHAPTER 9: THE ENEMY REVEALED–0700–0800
1 Combat Intelligence Communications Intelligence Summary (hereafter
referred to as “HYPO log”), Record Group 457, SRMN-012, p. 500.
2 Ibid. Imperial Japanese Navy ships kept Tokyo time wherever they were,
so 0400 was 0700 local. We are grateful to John Lundstrom for his
insights into this matter.
3 Ikuhiko Hata and Yasuho Izawa, Japanese Naval Aces and Fighter Units
in World War II. Trans. Don Gorham (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute
Press, 1989), pp. 355–56.
4 The reader is advised to refer to Appendix 3 for details on the Japanese
air unit launches and recoveries.
5 Kaneko, by the same token, was also given credit for two “large torpedo
planes” this morning; clearly a reference to his actions against the B-26s.
Hata and Izawa, pp. 355–56.
6 Fujita would be credited with seven kills this day (including partials), an
exaggeration, but was clearly a prominent contributor to the CAP’s
activities during the morning’s actions. Hata and Izawa, p. 326.
7 Account of Nagayasu Yasukuni, Sh gen Midowei Kaisen, pp. 212–27.
8 In fact, the pilot of this Avenger, Ens. Albert K. Earnest, managed to
regain control of his aircraft-the only Avenger to return to base.
9 Mount No. 2 was the twin 25 mm farthest forward on the port side.
10 This aircraft was almost certainly piloted by 1st Lt. Herbert Mayes. It is
likely that his aircraft had taken damage from both CAP fighters and AA.
Mark Horan, e-mail to Parshall, March 31, 2002.
11 Prange, per Genda statement, p. 214.
12 Ibid., per Kusaka statement, p. 215.
13 Nagumo Report, p. 14.
14 Fuchida, pp. 136, 143. Why Fuchida recalled the reserve strike force
being brought to the flight deck immediately after the morning launch is
unclear. Every other Japanese source on the matter of rearming-ATTG
reports, Senshi Sosho, and letters from Japanese survivors such as Hiry
’s Arimura (a bomber maintenance chief)-make it clear that arming was
performed in the hangars.
15 Akagi and Kaga, it will be recalled, had launched one Kank apiece for
the morning’s scouting missions, reducing the total number of aircraft in
CarDiv 1’s Kank tai from forty-five (twenty-seven on Kaga, eighteen on
Akagi) to forty-three. Akagis B5N would return at 0740 and would have
been rearmed as well. It is unclear when Kaga’s B5N, commanded by
WO Yoshino Haruo, returned to the ship, but from Yoshino’s accounts, it
 was likely later, during the American attacks on Kido Butai that occurred
after 0800.
16 The Type 91 torpedo was secured by widely spaced mounting brackets
that kept the weapon at a slight downward incline to ensure a proper
entry angle into the water. The tokaki that held the Type 80 general-
purpose bomb, in contrast, were closer together. Not only that, but since
the two weapons had different diameters, the hardware had to be
differently curved to match their exteriors.
17 This is speculation, but it fits the evidence. The operation that consumed
the majority of the time on the hangar decks during rearming was not
removing or stowing ordnance, it was changing out the tokaki. The
armorers had plenty of time to stow bombs below had they wished to.
However, the bomb rooms were extremely cramped working spaces;
stowing torpedoes while simultaneously retrieving bombs and sending
them up would have been almost impossible. As a result the bottleneck in
the stowage of munitions very likely resided in the bowels of the ship
among the overworked magazine crews, not on the hangars. Given this,
the armorers would have little choice but to stow the munitions near the
bomb lift and get on with their work, with the intent of passing the
munitions below when the opportunity arose.
18 In point of fact, one can postulate arming models wherein the carts were
used between more than one chutai at a time. The authors constructed
models of these much more complex process flows to optimize the use of
the scarce resource in the process-the carts. However, the added
complexity of this approach was hardly worth the effort, because it
entailed additional internal elevator moves and wait times at the ordnance
lifts. The authors consider it unlikely in the extreme that the Japanese
would have taken this approach, or even have conceived of it. This was,
after all, the 1940s, and sophisticated shop-floor flow management
techniques were yet to be invented.
19 The fact that this plane landed a mere three hours after being launched is
odd. The cruising speed of the Type 97 was 138 knots. Even accounting
for the fact that Kido Butai had moved to the southeast for the last three
hours, thereby cutting perhaps sixty miles off Suzuki’s return trip, there
was no way he should have covered 600-some miles in just three hours.
By all rights, he should have returned an hour and a half hence. Either
Akagis records for the landing time of this aircraft are incorrect, or
Suzuki had not flown his route correctly. In the absence of any additional
evidence, it is impossible to know which.
20 Nagumo Report, pp. 7, 15.
21 Ibid., p. 15.
22 Senshi Sosho, p. 313; Fuchida, p. 147, asserts that these rearming
operations were merely “suspended,” not reversed. However, given the
lack of reliability of Fuchida, we hew to Senshi Sosho’s version of
events.
23 Dallas Isom, “The Battle of Midway: Why the Japanese Lost,” U.S.
Naval War College Review (Summer 2000).
24 Japanese Monograph No. 93, p. 38. It should be noted that a delay in
communications was certainly conceivable. There had already been
similar delays in transmission of other messages to the Japanese flagship
this morning. There are good reasons for some of these delays. Incoming
coded signals arrived by radiotelegraph, which had a rate of transmission
of about seventy characters per minute at best (Peattie, p. 160).
Thereafter, the message had to be decoded, transcribed, and taken to the
bridge. As an example of this, Commander Ogawa’s message that Sand
Island had been bombed with “great results” had actually been sent
before Tomonaga’s signal announcing that a second attack against
Midway was needed. But in the process of being translated (or perhaps
even relayed from Kaga) over to the flagship, Ogawa’s report had
actually arrived on Akagis bridge seven minutes after Tomonaga’s, and
some twenty-seven minutes after it was first broadcast. Why Tomonaga’s
message, which presumably was also sent first to his mother ship-the
Hiry -made it over to Akagi first is unknown. It is likely that Tomonaga
transmitted directly to Akagi. Alternately, Hiry ’s radio watch may have
been speedier than Kaga’s in passing messages up the line.
25 HYPO Log, p. 500. We are grateful to John Lundstrom for pointing this
out to us.
26 Isom, p. 18.
27 We are grateful to John Lundstrom for his insights regarding American
carrier flag facilities, derived from his copious research on Admiral
Frank Jack Fletcher.
28 Ryunosuke Kusaka, Rengo Kantai (Combined Fleet) (Tokyo: Mainichi
Newspaper Co., 1952), pp. 83–84; Prange, p. 223.
29 Senshi Sosho, p. 282. We are grateful to Uchiyama Mutsuo for his
insights into these matters.
30 Willmott, Barrier and the Javelin, p. 389.
31 Ibid, p. 388. Although Nagumo didn’t know it, this was precisely what
was happening, as TF 16 was in the middle of its launch.
32 Prange, per Kusaka statement, p. 217.
33 Senshi Sosho, p. 282.
34 These were the oiler Neosho and the destroyer Sims. Both were sunk,
although Neosho remained floating for some days before her ultimate
demise at the hands of friendly vessels, allowing some men from both
crews to be rescued.
35 Japanese fuel tanks were not self-sealing, meaning that even so much as
a single bullet to a wing tank could lead to the loss of half of a plane’s
fuel load.
36 Depending on when WO Yoshino Haruo landed his Type 97 aircraft,
which had been involved in scouting operations during the morning.
37 This number would have been eighteen aircraft, if not for the probable
replacement of two of S ry ’s squadron by the experimental Type 2
bombers being used in the reconnaissance role.
38 We assume that the absence of Yoshino’s Type 97 would not affect the
rearming of other chutai during this period.
39 Fuchida, p. 203.
40 Ugaki, p. 144.
41 We are grateful to Commander John Kuehn, USN, an instructor at the
Army’s Staff College, for his insights into these matters, particularly with
regards to modern U.S. carrier doctrinal approach to mixed fleet
defense/strike operations.
42 Fuchida, pp. 149–50.
43 Isom, p. 14.
44 Zuikaku kodochoshos, JD-1 reel. We are grateful to James Sawruk for
his insights on this matter. The same accident would occur later on board
Sh kaku in the Battle of the Eastern Solomons.
45 It might be argued that aircraft on the flight deck would be easier to set
ablaze than aircraft in the hangar. However, as we shall see, the danger
posed to the structure of the ship by explosive ordnance detonating in the
confined spaces of the hangars was much greater than ordnance whose
explosive power would be vented at least partially into the atmosphere.
46 Prange, per Kusaka statement, p. 233.
47 Senshi Sosho, p. 282; Nagumo Report, p. 18. We thank Osamu Tagaya
for clarifying this matter.
48 Fuchida, pp. 152–53.
49 Lundstrom, First Team, p. 336.
50 Willmott, Barrier and the Jave/in, p. 397, notes this logical
inconsistency in Fuchida’s arguments as well.
 51 In actuality, the task force centered around Yorktown was at this moment
a bit closer-about 175 miles away. For the sake of argument, we will also
set aside the fact that Tone No. 4’s self-reported position would shortly
be shown to be grievously in error, meaning that the Japanese aircraft
probably would not have found the target directly in any case.
52 Isom, p. 18.

CHAPTER 10: TRADING BLOWS–0800–0917

1 Nagayasu account, Sh gen Midowei Kaisen. Nagayasu claims that one
American aircraft “self-exploded” (i.e., made a suicide crash) near Hiry ,
but this is not directly substantiated by the American records.
2 Cressman, p. 81.
3 Given the lack of any photographs taken of Kaga by B-17s at this
juncture-which photographed the other three carriers of Kido Butai -it
may simply have been that Kaga was temporarily hidden by cloud cover
and was able to hold her course without fear of attack.
4 Kaga Battle Report, p. 11.
5 Yoshino Haruo account, contained in interviews done for the game “Aces
of the Pacific.” We are grateful to John Bruning Jr. for supplying these
accounts. Bruning Collection, Hoover Institute.
6 Cressman, p. 81.
7 Prange, per Kusaka statement, p. 215.
8 Isom, pp. 18–19.
9 Nautilus Battle Report.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 The circumstances surrounding the disappearance of both these SB2Us
are somewhat mysterious, in that none of their squadron mates saw them
go down. However, it seems likely that Zeros accounted for both aircraft.
13 Kaga Battle Report, p. 19.
14 Fuchida, p. 150; Nagayasu account, Sh gen Midowei Kaisen.
15 Cressman, p. 113.
16 Naval War College Analysis, p. 125.
17 Lundstrom, First Team, pp. 339–40.
18 Ibid., p. 340.
19 Cressman, p. 89.
20 For night landings, this same information could be conveyed by a set of
colored lights located aft of the island. In addition, a white light in the
center of the landing array could be used to blink messages to the
 incoming pilot. A line of red, blue, and white lights aligned fore and aft
just abaft the island were used to indicate relative wind over the deck.
The outline and centerline of the flight deck were illuminated in white
lights, while crash barriers and the aft edge of the deck were indicated by
transverse rows of red lights. Each bank of lights could be dimmed
independently by rheostats. ATTG Report No. 1: 5; ATIG Report No. 2:
2; and ATIG Report No. 5: 2.
21 Map in Kaga action report, WDC160985, pp. 9, 11. It should be noted
that this conflicts with the generally accepted direction of the wind,
which has it blowing from the southeast. However, these estimates were
usually made by American pilots from their cockpits as a result of
observing wave directions and other atmospheric phenomena. As such,
we set them aside in favor of Kaga’s official records, whose aviators
were in a better position to observe the weather in proximity to their ship.
The morning’s wind conditions were quite variable, however, and would
shift to the northeast within the next hour and a half.
22 The track chart included in the Nagumo Report is probably that of
Nagara. For one thing, it shows the fleet on an evasive figure-eight
course at 0832, at a time when we know from Akagis air group records
that she was landing aircraft, and therefore had to be holding a steady
course into the prevailing wind. Interestingly, too, at 1025, after Akagi
had been bombed, the Nagumo Report course chart shows the fleet
apparently continuing to make progress to the north and then looping
back to the south. In fact, this movement is quite consistent with
Nagara’s known movements, as she doubled back to take Admiral
Nagumo off of Akagi, which was dead in the water. Likewise, the
peculiar “dogleg” to the northwest shown in the track chart between 1630
and 1700 corresponds to when Nagara was involved in investigating
downed U.S. aviators, whereas Hiry should have been going due west at
this time. It must be admitted that attempting to re-create Akagis
movements from the Nagumo Report require some educated guesswork
at times, particularly regarding her evasive maneuvers against VT-8 from
0920 to 0930. Interestingly, though, despite the differences in course
headings, the two course tracks converge in the same general region by
about 1020. This reinforces the notion that the scene of Kido Butais fatal
attack was indeed near the area that the Nagumo Report chart has
indicated, although our derived course would place her roughly four
nautical miles west-northwest of that given in the chart. We don’t
consider this degree of error extreme, given the navigational methods of
 the era, the large size of the formation (probably around twenty miles
across, including the screening units), and the battle conditions then
pertaining.
23 USSBS interviews of both Captain Aoki (Akagi ) and Kaga’s hikocho
Amagai confirm this.
24 This is based on a detailed examination of the sighting reports from
these units, as well as those of the American units that attacked them.
25 Fuchida, p. 145.
26 The latter resulted from the prewar Japanese phonetic spelling of her
name as “Sa-u-ri-yu.” See the illustrations in appendix 6 for details.
27 Carl Snow, “Japanese Carrier Operations: How Did They Do It?” The
Hook (Spring 1995). The similarity of this system to the optical “call the
ball” systems developed postwar by the Americans and British is notable.
Whether either force was influenced by this much earlier Japanese
invention is unknown.
28 Ibid.; Hasegawa, p. 167; and USNTMJ, Report A-11, pp. 15–18.
29 ATIG Report No. 2: 2.
30 ATIG Report No. 1: 5; ATIG Report No. 2: 2; ATIG Report No. 5: 3.
31 ATIG Report No. 5: 3.
32 K jinsha, vol. 6, p. 35.
33 ATIG Report No. 1: 5.
34 K jinsha, vol. 6, p. 35.
35 It is likely that Tanaka had become involved in CAP activities over the
fleet upon his return from Midway and was mortally wounded in this
way.
36 Captain Eric Brown, Duels in the Sky (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute
Press, 1988), pp. 68–72.
37 In the early stages of the Pacific war, aircraft arresting hooks were
controlled by the pilot (in single-seat aircraft) or the observer crewman
(in multiseat aircraft). However, later in the war, the hook apparatus was
modified so that the deck crew was made responsible for releasing the
hook. This was because the decline in the quality of aircrew training had
led to an increase in deck accidents caused by premature hook release.
ATIG Report No. 3: 1.
38 Each arresting wire was controlled by enlisted crewmen, whose stations
were staggered port and starboard down the length of the flight deck. All
crash barriers were controlled by a single enlisted man stationed on the
port side of the flight deck, who received signals to raise and lower the
barrier from the hikocho. ATIG Report No. 2: 2.
 39 Nagumo Report, p. 16. Unlike thinly clad high-explosive (land attack)
bombs, semi armor-piercing bombs had heavier casings that were
capable of defeating at least some thickness of armor steel. They would
therefore penetrate more deeply into a ship’s vitals before exploding.
40 Prange, per interview with Kuroshima, 28 November 1964, pp. 235–36.
41 Nautilus action report.
42 Ibid.
43 While speculative, it is possible that the aggressive Yamaguchi had
anticipated that his urgent suggestion to Nagumo to launch a
counterstrike would be accepted. If so, he might have begun spotting his
dive-bombers in anticipation of an attack. When such an attack was not
forthcoming, Yamaguchi would have had to clear his flight decks to
recover Tomonaga and Hiry ’s aircraft. We are grateful to John
Lundstrom for pointing this out.
44 Lord, p. 174.
45 They subsequently refused capture and were killed on Kure by
American troops after the battle.
46 Maruyama account, Hoover Institution, Bruning Collection.
47 Prange, per Genda statement, p. 251.
48 This is speculation, but we know that the Japanese used chutai in exactly
such a manner so as to preserve some level of target selection capability
for the subunits in the hikotai, yet retain sufficient power to hit a target
heavily.
49 WDC160985, p. 30.
50 Ibid., pp. 6–9.
51 Ibid., p. 13.
52 Ibid., p. 21.
53 Ibid., p. 29.
54 Cressman, pp. 67–68.
55 Ibid.
56 This plane, piloted by Lt. Kikuchi Rokuro, had forced landed near Kure.
Rather than being taken prisoner when American troops showed up to
collect them, the crew committed suicide.

CHAPTER 11: FATAL COMPLICATIONS–0917–1020

1 When arming for antiship strikes, standard Japanese practice was to equip
dive-bombers with a mixture of one third HE weapons (for flak
suppression) and two thirds semi-AP weapons, which would do the
greater damage to the ship itself.
2 Fuchida, p. 153. He was clearly taking the Nagumo Report at its word in
this regard.
3 Nagumo Report, p. 7.
4 Lord, p. 139.
5 Legend has it that Waldron and Ring had an acrimonious discussion
involving hand signals just before Waldron’s departure. However, this
appears unlikely, given the vast altitude differences between the two
commanders’ formations. However, several members of Hornets air
group, including Ens. Ben Tappan, Ens. Humphrey L. Tallmann, Ens.
Troy T. Guillory, and ARM2c Richard T. Woodson, all recalled hearing
a heated radio conversation between the two men after takeoff, despite
the conditions of radio silence then pertaining. Midway Roundtable
Forum, January 23, 2005.
6 Lundstrom, First Team, p. 341; Cressman et al., p. 91.
7 Thaddeus Tuleja, Climax at Midway (New York: Norton, 1960), p. 211;
George Gay, Sole Survivor (Naples, FL: Midway Publishers, 1979), p.
113.
8 VT-8 action report, as written by Ens. George Gay.
9 Hata and Izawa, p. 291. Taniguchi graduated from the 51st Pilot Training
Class of June 1940.
10 Ibid., pp. 295–96. Yamamoto graduated from the 24th Pilot Training
Class of July 1934.
11 Ibid., pp. 345–46. Originally an engineering enlisted man, Suzuki
graduated from the 28th Pilot Training Class in August 1935. Iizuka,
Suzuki, and their wingman, PO1c Nagahama Yoshikazu, had all
participated in the morning attack on Midway but were now back in
action a mere half hour after landing.
12 Which three pilots remains unclear.
13 Cressman et al., p. 92.
14 The grim demise of Waldron’s command illuminates an interesting side
issue. Unlike the USN, the vast majority of whose pilots were officers,
the Imperial Navy employed a mixture of enlisted men and officer pilots
in its carrier groups. Often, the rigid social hierarchies prevalent in
Japanese society were mirrored in the pilot ranks as well, with officers
holding themselves apart from the rank and file. This often rankled the
enlisted men, and not without good reason. The truth of the matter was
that the enlisted men were often the better pilots. On average, they
possessed substantially greater stick time than the lieutenants who led
them into battle. By the war’s end, nine of Japan’s top ten naval aces
 would come from the ranks. VT-8’s destruction was a microcosm of this
larger reality, as Waldron’s squadron found itself confronted by a group
of NCOs who wore their Zeros like second skins, and were deadly
triggermen.
15 VT-8 action report. Cressman et al., p. 92. The Nagumo log mentions
that Akagi commenced AA action to starboard at this time after
commencing evasive actions in reaction to the same attack, meaning that
she must have turned to port to unmask her batteries against the targets to
her northeast.
16 Lundstrom, First Team, pp. 335–36.
17 Ibid., p. 342.
18 Ibid., pp. 344–45.
19 Ibid., p. 343.
20 Testimony of Kanazawa Hidetoshi, a Kank pilot, as related to Hyodo
Nisohachi. Correspondence with Hyodo, June 2001. It is even possible
that Yamaguchi had begun to arm his kanbaku as early as 0830, when
Nagumo’s order to arm carrier bombers with 250-kg weapons had been
received, despite the fact that takeoff was not imminent.
21 Nautilus action report.
22 VT-6 action report. S ry and HiryWs relative positions are less easy to
fix, though it seems likely they were in a rough line abreast northeast of
CarDiv 1. S ry should have been leading her sister, but her more
convoluted evasive maneuvers in the face of Waldron’s attack may have
slowed her relative speed of advance.
23 VT-6 action report clearly states that the Japanese carriers were on a
westward course at the time they were first sighted. This makes sense in
light of the fleet having evaded VT-8 by running away from Waldron’s
flight.
24 VT-6 action report.
25 Ibid.; Cressman et al., pp. 93–94.
26 Nagumo Report, p. 17, speaks of Akagi maneuvering at thirty knots.
27 VT-6’s chart makes it clear that the lower left corner carrier of a triangle
of three carriers headed west was their target. Since we know that this
ship was Kaga, this also supports the supposition that Kido Butais
carriers had evaded VT-8’s attack by turning on their heels, rather than
turning in formation.
28 We are grateful to Mark Horan for his insights and wording regarding
this attack, drawn on personal interviews with two survivors of VT-6-Lt.
Robert Laub and MACH Walter A. Winchell.
29 U.S. Naval War College Analysis, p. 128.
30 Lundstrom, First Team, pp. 343–44.
31 Sano had declined to land with the rest of his CAP patrol at 0952.
32 One of VT-6’s aircraft would ditch on the return flight; its crew would
be rescued after seventeen days at sea.
33 VT-6 action report, 2nd endorsement to action report.
34 Prange, via Genda’s statement, p. 252.
35 Cressman et al., p. 94.
36 Eric Bergerud, in his excellent Fire in the Sky, makes it clear that aerial
combat in the Pacific theater operated under a completely different set of
unwritten rules than were followed in Europe. Pilots on both sides in the
Pacific routinely did everything in their power to kill enemy aviators.
Eric Bergerud, Fire in the Sky (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000), pp.
424–428.
37 Prange, via Genda’s statement, p. 252.
38 CV-6 action report, p. 2.
39 VB-6 action report.
40 Cressman et al., p. 96.
41 Walter Lord Papers.
42 This notion is further reinforced by the fact that numerous witnesses on
Hiry describe the bombing of Kaga in great detail, and (according to
one account), even tried to warn her of the impending dive-bombing.
This is in contrast with the eyewitness accounts from S ry , which speak
of Kaga’s attack in very vague terms and refer to the great distance from
her. Additionally, diagrams in both VB-3’s and VT-3’s action reports
clearly show VT-3’s target as being the southwestern of the northern pair
of Japanese carriers. Not only that, but that target is shown as lying
closer to a more southerly carrier (which we will show to be Akagi ), than
it was to VB-3’s target, which we know was S ry . These diagrams
show VT-3’s target (Hiry ) to be roughly on S ry ’s port bow,
southwest of her as both ships are on a northwesterly course. Thus U.S.
and Japanese primary sources back the interpretation of S ry being the
northernmost and calls the conventional interpretation of Hiry being
“way to the north” seriously into question. An additional piece of
evidence to be considered in this matter is the known actions of
Chikuma. By 1045, after the fatal attack, S ry was dead in the water and
firmly ablaze. Shortly thereafter, at 1058, Chikuma observed Hiry
launching her counterstrike aircraft, meaning that she was in rough
proximity to Yamaguchi’s flagship. Yet we also know that Chikuma
 dispatched her No. 2 cutter with seven men and a doctor to assist the S
ry at 1112. This would have required Chikuma to have come to a stop
and lowered her boats shortly after 1100. The implication is clear:
Chikuma, and therefore Hiry , were both at least in the general area of S
ry as late as 1100. Had Hiry been north of S ry when the latter was
attacked at 1025, this would be far less likely, as she would have
presumably been increasing the degree of separation from her sister
during the interval after the attack.
However, a scenario in which a more southerly Hiry first turns south,
away from S ry (so as to avoid the attack on her, much as Akagi did when
she observed the attack on Kaga) and then circles around to head north
again after the attack makes more sense. In this scenario, Hiry would have
taken a while to draw level with S ry , and would then have passed her by
as she continued north. This would have allowed her escort Chikuma to be
in a position to both aid S ry and still witness Hiry ’s launch. This is
further supported by at least one vivid Japanese account from Hiry (Oedi
Hisashi, Yamaguchi, Tamon, p. 243) of what S ry ’s appearance was
shortly after the bombing. Yet the same eyewitnesses on Hiry ’s bridge had
much less detail to share regarding Akagis and Kaga’s damage, since
CarDiv 1 was by then far astern. The overall impression one gets, then, is
that Hiry was clearly in a position to observe her sister in minute detail
after she was bombed, meaning that she most likely had to be south of S ry
when she was attacked.
43 He may have ordered more than a shotai warmed up; we simply do not
know. In the face of a new attack, with the Americans being proximate,
Captain Aoki could easily have spotted six new fighters on deck, whose
numbers would have been more readily remarked upon by the Americans
who would shortly be attacking her. However, this is speculation.
44 Agawa, p. 315.
45 See in particular John Lundstrom’s First Team, pp. 362–63, and
Cressman et al., pp. 99–100.
46 Cressman et al., p. 351. VT-6 survivors specifically mention seeing
American Wildcats (most likely the two F4Fs flying close cover on VT-
3) charging in to attack as they themselves were exiting the battlefield.
47 Nagumo Report, pp. 8–9. Amagai’s account in USSBS also indicates
that the carriers were all running to avoid this incoming attack.
48 Lundstrom, First Team, p. 360. This is based on the observations of the
pilots of VT-3, who noticed all the Japanese ships running northwest at
high speed with CarDiv 2’s fantails toward them as they overhauled for
 attack.
49 Amagai account, USSBS.
50 Lord, “Riddles of Midway” appendix.
51 The Nagumo Report, p. 19, notes at 1020 that Akagi, steaming on course
300, sighted “bomber bearing 30 degrees directly over the Kaga” and
thereafter went into a maximum turn. The English version left unclear
whether “bearing 30 degrees” referred to a True bearing, or a relative
bearing off Akagis bow, and if the latter, whether to port or starboard.
However, Tully was able to verify that the original Japanese version of
the report JD-1 reel) plainly states the bearing as being 30 degrees to
port, a discovery that cements the configuration of CarDiv 1 at the time
of the attack.
52 Fuchida, p. 163.
53 Amagai account, USSBS.
54 HYPO log, p. 3, 0711 entry.
55 Lundstrom, First Team, p. 349; correspondence with Mark Horan,
August 10, 2004.
56 Lundstrom, First Team, p. 352.
57 The identities of these Zero pilots are unknown, but it is likely that more
than one came from Kaga. In addition, HirjWs fighter group mentions
tangling with Grumman fighters. Hiry lost three pilots during this time,
including two very experienced first-class petty officers. Given Hiry ’s
apparently numerous encounters with Grummans within this general time
frame, it would not be surprising if one or more of her losses came at the
hands of either Thach or the other pair of Wildcats in proximity with VT-
3. See also Lundstrom, First Team, pp. 363–64.
58 We are grateful to Mark Horan for his insights into VT-3’s attacks. His
extensive interviews of the American Midway aviators proved crucial to
our understanding of this matter.
59 VB-3 action report.
60 Prange, p. 255, via interviews with Fujita, 1964 and 1965. S ry ’s
operational records reveal that Fujita was only on board S ry for fifteen
minutes between his second and third sortie of the day. As an officer and
chutai leader, he was expected to lead by example, and he certainly did
so.
61 Hata and Izawa, p. 326.
62 Commander, VB-3 Report, June 7, 1942.
63 Ibid.; also communication from John Lundstrom, August 2, 2002.
64 Ibid., VB-3, and accompanying sketch.
 65 Ibid.
66 VB-3 action report.
67 We are indebted to Mark Horan for his insights into this matter. Mark’s
interviews with many of the pilots involved in the dive-bomber attacks
against Kido Butai has helped confirm that all three dive-bombing
squadrons attempted to take a position upwind against their targets, so as
to increase their accuracy. Enterprise’s aircraft had the benefit of
attacking out of the sun as well, which decreased the effectiveness of
Kaga’s AA fire.
68 VB-3 action report, Mark Horan.
69 S ry report, p. 19.
70 USS Enterprise action report, June 13, 1942; Air Battle of the Pacific
June 4–6, 1942, p. 2.
71 Prange, p. 261; Cressman et al., p. 101.
72 Cressman et al., p. 101.
73 Ibid.

CHAPTER 12: A FALLACIOUS FIVE MINUTES–1020–1025

1 Fuchida, pp. 155–156.
2 Nagumo Report, pp. 13–20, and translated JD-1.
3 Senshi Sosho, pp. 372–78.
4 Best, in an interview with John Lundstrom, April 2000. Best stated that
during the time of his attack, only six or seven aircraft were on Akagi’s
deck, and they clearly were Zeros. Furthermore, they were spotted well
aft and were using most of the flight deck for runoff room. As he
attacked, a single Zero (Kimura’s) was in the process of launching.
5 “Draft Report of Attack Conducted June 4, 1942, Prepared by
Commander Bombing Squadron 3.” This report is interesting in that it
allows the historian to collect Leslie’s immediate postbattle impressions,
rather than reading the more polished official report. We are grateful to
John Lundstrom for making us aware of this version of the report.
6 Lord, p. 169.
7 Walter Lord Papers.
8 Japanese pilots, of course, were often guilty of the same errors.

CHAPTER 13: THE IRON FIST–1020–1030

1 Oide Hisashi, Yudan teitoku Yamaguchi Tamon (“The Brash Admiral
Yamaguchi Tamon”) (Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten), 1985, pp. 222–23.
2 Yoshino Haruo and Maeda Takeshi accounts, Bruning Collection, Hoover
 Institute.
3 We know that Akagi noted that Kaga was just about to commence flight
operations (Nagumo Report, p. 20). Since we are also certain that Akagi
was trailing Kaga, and off her starboard quarter, a starboard turn to
commence flight ops would have had the effect of bringing Kaga across
Akagi’s bow and potentially onto a collision course-not a wise move. As
such, we consider it probable that Kaga was turning to port. Cameraman
Makishima saw this port turn (Walter Lord Papers), and may have
mistaken it for an evasive maneuver.
4 Senshi Sosho, pp. 376–77, indicates that Kaga’s evasive maneuver was to
starboard.
5 Twenty-eight aircraft, to be exact, carrying a grand total of eleven 1000-
lb, seventeen 500-lb, and twenty-two 100-lb bombs.
6 Yamazaki’s death is confirmed in Sawachi, p. 378.
7 Some accounts assert that this hit also destroyed a Kaga fighter just
taking off, but this is not substantiated in the ship’s action report. Senshi
Sosho, p. 376, supports the ship’s action reports in this matter.
8 It must be admitted that weaving Mitoya’s and Amagai’s (multiple)
accounts into a coherent narrative is a frustrating exercise. These two
men were apparently the only survivors from the catastrophe that befell
Kaga’s bridge, yet neither was a direct witness to it, or they would have
been killed as well. Mitoya’s rendition of events (related in Howard
Oleck, ed., Heroic Battles of WW II [New York: Belmont Books, 1962],
pp. 150–58) actually places the destruction of the island much later, well
after the initial American attacks were concluded. Indeed, he cites a
mysterious second American attack as being the reason for the bridge’s
destruction. That he and Amagai-who were apparently standing not
twenty feet apart at the initiation of the American attack-should have
such a different account of subsequent events is extremely disturbing.
Yet from a strict historical standpoint, Mitoya’s account must be weighed
as carefully as Amagai’s, because he is one of the closest things we have
to being a witness. This caution is compounded by Amagai’s own faults
as a source. His several accounts each contain internal inconsistencies of
one sort or another, such that one wonders what his true role on board
ship actually was that morning. Amagai, to be charitable, seems a bit
flaky.
Mitoya also has his difficulties. He names Kaga’s gunnery officer, who
was supposedly a close personal friend, as Lt. Cdr. Musumi Tadashi. Yet
Sawachi Hisae’s authoritative Midowei Kaisen: Kiroku names this same
officer as Miyano Toyosaburo. Similarly, Mitoya mentions another officer,
Lieutenant Fiyuma, who is apparently killed on the bridge. However,
Kaga’s casualty returns show no such individual (and indeed, “Fiyuma” is
not a proper Japanese name.) Finally, Lt. Cdr. Mitoya describes himself as
Kaga’s communications officer. Yet we know that Lt. Cdr. Takahashi
Hidekazu, who was killed on board her, is named in Sawachi’s account as
having the job description that Mitoya claims for himself. All in all, we feel
that Mitoya’s account must be treated with great care. Indeed, he may be
another charlatan along the lines of Ogawa Raita, a Zero pilot who gave his
account of Midway to Walter Lord, despite not even being in the battle.
In the end, we incline toward accepting a synthesis of both accounts, with
Kaga’s bridge being destroyed late in the initial attack by an actual bomb
hit. This bomb hit may well have occurred later in the American attack
sequence (which probably lasted about three minutes) than has been
previously acknowledged, thereby giving Okada the time necessary to issue
orders to the engine room and Mitoya before being killed. We discount the
possibility of a gas cart destroying the bridge-the descriptions of damage to
the bridge as put forth by Yoshino Haruo, Kunisada Yoshio, and Senshi
Sosho match more closely with a high explosive event directly on the
island, rather than a simple pyrotechnic episode occurring outside its
structure. Gasoline explosions are spectacular, but unless they occur within
a contained space, they have less of a chance of generating the sort of blast
overpressures that would have been needed to deform the island in the
manner described by these various sources. Similarly, we reject the notion
of the bridge being destroyed long after the 1022 attack-the very high
fatality rate among the ship’s senior officers suggests a “decapitating event”
of some sort occurred at the outset of the attack, when several of them
would logically have been grouped on the bridge. More important, there is
no evidence that any American air attack occurred against Kaga after her
fateful 1022 bombing.
9 The Nagumo Report’s statement that Okada ordered emergency steering
makes no mention if his order was actually acted on. While it is unlikely
that Kaga’s engineering spaces were out of action this quickly, it is
altogether possible that voice communications to engineering had been
disabled through destruction of the sound tubes below.
10 Lord, p. 172.
11 This rendition of events originated with Fuchida, who did not witness
them himself.
12 Yoshino Haruo, letter to Parshall, March 27, 2000. We are grateful to
 Ron Werneth for arranging this correspondence.
13 Yoshino Haruo account, Hoover Institute, Bruning Collection.
14 Senshi Sosho, p. 376.
15 Sawachi Hisae’s stunning Midowei Kaisen: Kiroku contains tabular data
for every single casualty-Japanese and American-in the entire battle. This
includes name, rank, term of service, province of birth, and age at time of
death for each man. From this raw tabular data, it was possible to
develop insights into the nature of Kaga’s damage profile, as well as that
of the other carriers.
16 Kaga lost nine individuals of lieutenant commander rank and above; ten,
if Kaga’s air group leader is included. By contrast, Akagi’s highest-
ranking fatality was an engineering lieutenant (Lt. Sugiura Kyozo); Hiry
lost her captain; and S ry lost her captain, chief engineer, and another
lieutenant commander.
17 Kaga’s officer casualties are listed in Sawachi, pp. 364–404. Okada’s
death is listed on p. 368; Kawaguchi’s on p. 387; Miyano, p. 372;
Takahashi, p. 375; Monden, p. 402.
18 It is unlikely that the attack on Kaga was terribly well coordinated,
seeing as it was composed of aircraft from two separate squadrons, one
of which was not supposed to be diving on her at all. As a result, the
attack probably lasted a little longer than prescribed in American dive-
bomber doctrine, which specified dive intervals of six to seven seconds
between aircraft. USF-74, p. 105.
19 Maeda Takeshi account, Hoover Institute, Bruning Collection.
20 Cho account, Sh gen Midowei Kaisen, p. 243.
21 VB-3 action report.
22 Kanao account, Sh gen Midowei Kaisen.
23 Lord, pp. 173–74.
24 As on most warships, S ry ’s mounts were fitted with physical restraints
to safeguard them from firing into the ship itself, or across the flight
deck.
25 Kanao’s account indicates that the American planes attacking from
starboard were taken under fire by eight 25-mm guns, indicating that all
three mounts on the bow, as well as the five mounts ranged down the
starboard side, were committed to repelling this attack. This meant that
very little was left to be used against the port and stern attacks, even if
they had been detected, which apparently they were not.
26 Lord, p. 173.
27 Kanao account, Sh gen Midowei Kaisen.
28 Lord, p. 174.
29 This is something of a revision to the Nagumo Report, which places the
forward hit more to the centerline of the ship.
30 There is conflicting evidence as to which bomb landed first, the one at
the bow, or the amidships hit. Both came down within a minute of each
other. It is interesting to note that the actual dive-bomber attack was
apparently spread out over three minutes, even though three separate
groups of aircraft were diving at approximately the same time. Normally,
a three-or four-plane element would have completed their attack within
thirty to forty-five seconds. It must be assumed, therefore, that the
attacking groups were coming down separately. According to Mark
Horan, the 1st Division (five aircraft plus one aircraft w/o bomb), the 2nd
Division (three aircraft plus two aircraft w/o bomb), and Lieutenant
Shumway of the 3rd Division all dove on S ry . One flier from the 2nd
Division (who was armed), and two members of the 3rd Division (one
aircraft armed plus one aircraft w/o bomb), dove on Haruna from widely
divergent angles, while the two remaining members of the 3rd Division
(both armed) dove on Isokaze. Given the dispersal of bomb hit times, it
can be surmised that a hit on S ry was made by each attacking group.
Lieutenant Holmberg almost certainly recorded the first hit, forward.
Shumway delivered the amidships hit, but the rest of his division pulled
out after seeing the third hit. This impact, astern, was most likely
contributed by Lieutenant Bottomley, from the 2nd Division, which had
swung around the farthest in their attack because of S ry ’s evasive
maneuvers.
31 The Nagumo Report states that S ry remained under power until 1040.
However, it may well be that she was merely coasting to a stop between
1030 and 1040.
32 Naganuma account, Sh gen Midowei Kaisen, p. 133.
33 Senshi Sosho, p. 379.
34 We are indebted to Mark Horan for specific information regarding
Best’s attack formation and results.
35 Nagumo Report, p. 20.
36 Japanese warships sometimes rolled the crew’s hammocks into bundles
and then wrapped them around the ship’s island to serve as extra
protection against splinters.
37 Makishima and Sasabe, as quoted in Lord’s notes. Most American
sources accept this interpretation as well. Hugh Bicheno’s assertion in
Midway, p. 148, that Kroeger’s bomb “punched through [Akagi’s] deck
 and exploded close enough alongside to hole her hull” is not backed up
by any of the primary or secondary Japanese sources available.
Furthermore, given the American attack profiles, the drop angles of their
bombs meant that any American weapons that hit Akagi would have been
carried in toward the center of the ship, rather than away from her hull.
Additionally, the likelihood that an American bomb would have hit the
flight deck, traveled through some portion of the ship, hit and penetrated
the ship’s side, and then detonated nearer the waterline is extraordinarily
low In sum, Bicheno’s claim is completely insupportable.
38 Sasabe, as quoted in Lord’s notes.
39 Fuchida, Aoki, Kusaka, and Sasabe, in their various accounts, all say it
did.
40 Makishima quote.
41 Lundstrom interview with Richard Best.
42 Nagumo Report, pp. 19–20. The report, referring to the two hits, states
that the aft hit was “on the rear guard of the port flight deck. (Neither
were fatal hits.)” Nagumo Report, p. 9. It should be noted, however, that
a casual reading of the Nagumo Report would lead to the conclusion that
it apparently contradicts itself regarding this hit. On Akagi’s damage
chart, p. 52, the aft “hit” is listed as a fatal hit. Prange repeats this
rendition in Miracle at Midway. However, we believe this to be a
transposition error in the Nagumo Report, because the center hit is
described as “fatal” in the more complete description of the damage
earlier in the report (p. 20). Our view in this matter is further supported
by Makishima’s very detailed statements regarding the exact nature of
the near miss, the deck spotting of the CAP fighters as observed by Best
and inferred from Akagi’s operational records, and the known effects of
the aft hit on the rudder.
43 It only stands to reason that earlier Western accounts, not having
analyzed Kid Butais CAP movements in detail, inferred the existence of
strike aircraft on Akagi’s deck, and hence went to the “logical”
conclusion regarding the existence of resulting explosions and fires.
44 We are grateful to Mark Horan for his insights into this attack,
buttressed by his extensive interviews of Richard Best, Jim Murray, and
other pilots in VB-6. E-mail to Parshall, March 6, 2003.
45 Lord, p. 173.
46 Statement of Wilhelm Esders, Harry Corl, and Lloyd Childers given to
Mark Horan. Communication from Horan to Parshall, August 7, 2002.
Japanese sources note attacks developing as early as 1013, although we
 are inclined to believe that these times note the beginning of taking the
enemy aircraft under fire by the CAP, and not when they dropped their
fish against Hiry . It is worth noting, too, that Dick Best remarked that
he saw VT-3’s aircraft still closing on their target as he was exiting the
battlefield after bombing Akagi, which surely meant sometime after
1030.
47 Nagayasu account, Sh gen Midowei Kaisen.
48 VT-3 2nd Section report by Capt. Esders.
49 Nagayasu account.
50 Prange, p. 256; Hata and Izawa, p. 326.

CHAPTER 14: FIRE AND DEATH–1030–1100

1 NavTechJap S-06-1, p. 69.
2 Japanese deck planking was 45-mm thick (Hasegawa, Nihon no K k
bokan, p. 143) and, unlike thicker timbers, would probably have burned
relatively easily
3 Figures given are for Unry -class carriers, a late-war derivative of the
Hiry , and fairly representative of a late-model Japanese fleet carrier
design. NavTechJap A-11. The density of the piping network aboard the
older Akagi and Kaga is unknown, but it is likely that they had similar
arrangements installed during their mid-1930’s refits.
4 High-octane fuel was usually stored in separate portions of both the fore
and aft aviation gasoline tanks. NavTechJap A-11, Figure 1, p. 11.
5 It should be noted that the U.S. Navy had begun to tackle these issues
aboard its carriers within the first few months of the war. At the time of
the battle, Yorktown was already draining her fuel lines and filling them
with CO2 when not in use–an important innovation in minimizing the
dangers inherent in aircraft fueling systems.
6 We speculate that flashtight doors were fitted above the immediate level
of the magazines. None of the carriers lost at Midway suffered magazine
explosions, even after extensive fires, indicating that some level of
protection existed in the ships’ innards.
7 Letter from Yoshida Akihiko to Parshall, August 1, 2000.
8 It should be noted, however, that the particulars of the piping and
segmentation used on older Japanese carriers is far from clear.
NavTechJap Report S-01-3, pp. 36–37, contradicts the usage of cast-iron
piping and port/starboard segmentation, stating that while segmentation
was poor by American standards, it did exist, and that fire main piping
was seamless galvanized stainless steel. However, NavTechJap’s scope
 of interest was almost exclusively late-war Japanese design and practice,
leaving it open to question as to whether the report’s comments would
have applied to the Midway carriers, two of which were among the oldest
such vessels in the IJN and could not help but be designed well before
the full hazards of hangar deck conflagrations were appreciated.
9 Many of the comments on carrier hangar deck construction in this section
are derived from Peattie, Sunburst, pp. 52–77.
10 Noted Japanese naval aviation expert Osamu Tagaya speculates that one
of the reasons the Japanese may have opted for enclosed hangar decks
was because of the rougher sea conditions in the Western Pacific
(communication to Parshall, August 20, 2004). This design practice may
also have been continued as a result of the severe battering carrier Ry j
suffered during a large typhoon off northern Honshu in September 1935
(the famous “Fourth Fleet Incident”), which led to widespread changes in
Japanese naval design practice. See Evans and Peattie, pp. 243–45.
11 The flight decks of Akagi and Kaga were about sixty-five feet above the
waterline. S ry and Hiry were a more modest forty-two feet, but only
by the expedient of reducing hangar clearance to an almost unusable
figure of 15 feet in the upper hangar and less than 14 feet in the lower, as
compared to 17.5 feet for all American fleet carriers from the Yorktown
onward.
12 Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, vol. 6, Sh kaku, Zuikaku, S ry
, Hiry , Unry -class, Taih (Tokyo: K jinsha, 1996), p. 29.
13 Kunisada account, Sh gen Midowei Kaisen.
14 Bergerud, p. 536.
15 Sawachi, tabular data in Midowei Kaisen: Kiroku.
16 Given the number of bombs dropped on her (50 of all sizes), Kaga likely
took more than four hits.
17 Senshi S sho, p. 376, confirms that Kaga’s pumping capacity was
destroyed at the outset, and this may have been why. The reasons for
locating such a vital piece of damage-control equipment in such a
vulnerable location defy understanding. Like as not, the need for such an
emergency generator was not identified until Kaga’s 1935 refit, at which
time no space for it belowdecks could be found. An exposed generator
was certainly better than none at all, but its immediate destruction points
out the difficulties in using converted warships as carriers–without a
systematic, keel-up design, many aspects of the resulting warship were
inferior to a purpose-built carrier.
18 Senshi S sho, p. 376.
 19 Morinaga’s account of the moments immediately following Kaga’s
bombing are found in Lord, p. 181.
20 Kunisada account in Sh gen Midowei Kaisen.
21 At the time of the attack, Kaga had the following aircraft in her hangars:

Twenty-seven B5N (317 gallons apiece)

Seventeen D3A (285 gallons apiece)
Eleven A6M (114 gallons apiece)
Total: 14,658 gallons if all aircraft fueled.

Source for fuel figures: Mechanic of World Aircraft, vols. 5, 11, 14 (Tokyo:
K jinsha), 1993, 1994, 1995, respectively.
22 This contains a degree of speculation, but fits with the evidence of S ry
s rapid loss of power and of steam emanating from her midships.
23 Kanao account, Sh gen Midowei Kaisen.
24 The Nagumo Report, p. 10, ascribes an explosion in S ry ’s torpedo
storage room as occurring at 1040, but this is unlikely. Such an explosion
would surely have sunk S ry outright, or severely damaged her under
water, leading to rapid flooding. Rather, we believe that the large
explosions aboard the ship were the result of detonations of aviation fuel
vapors and ordnance near the torpedo lift.
25 Naganuma account, Sh gen Midowei Kaisen.
26 Aimune account, Sh gen Midowei Kaisen; Interrogation of Hiry
survivors.
27 Lord, p. 174.
28 Nagumo Report, p. 20.
29 Ibid.
30 Contemporary USN damage-control practice, as cited in F.T.P. 170(B),
is explicit on this point.
31 Kunisada account in Sh gen Midowei Kaisen.
32 The parallels between Kaga’s damage and that of the U.S. carrier
Franklin, damaged off Japan in March 1945, are striking. Franklin, too,
had been engaged in fueling operations when she was hit by two bombs.
Her fuel lines had ruptured, and her hangar had rapidly filled with
explosive vapor. Within a few minutes of the initial hits, she was
convulsed by the first in a series of devastating fuel-air explosions. These
heavy blasts served as catalysts to initiate further induced explosions in
the ordnance lying on the hangar deck. The fact that Franklin survived
her ordeal, albeit at a terrible cost of 724 dead (a number quite similar to
 Kaga’s losses of 814) is a testament to the superior survivability worked
into the design of the Essex-class carriers and to the vastly superior
damage-control technique of the U.S. Navy by that point in the war.
33 Account of Thomas Cheek, e-mail to Parshall, May 26, 2002.
34 Kunisada account, Sh gen Midowei Kaisen.
35 Amagai account, Sh gen Midowei Kaisen.
36 Amagai’s account in Sh gen Midowei Kaisen states that at the time of
his leaving the ship, he decided that he “would leave the vessel’s fate to
the more skilled actions of the crew, and her second in command officer,
if alive.”
37 Yoshino Haruo specifically commented that airmen knew nothing of the
business of fighting fires, which is why the flyers were evacuated from
their carriers as soon as possible. This was true for American aviators as
well.
38 Both the chief engineer and chief of equipment were engineering
lieutenant commanders.
39 This aircraft, described in the Nagumo Report as a torpedo plane, may
have been a VT-3 TBD, or an SBD flying at low altitude trying to clear
the area.
40 This last point is speculation but certainly would have occurred in the
case of a major engineering casualty such as a loss of steering.
41 Commander Sasabe, as interviewed by Walter Lord in 1966. Personal
notes of Walter Lord.
42 E-mail from William Garzke to Parshall, August 14, 2001. Garzke, a
noted naval architect and marine forensics expert, gave credence to the
theory that Akagi’s rudder was damaged by a near miss.
43 We are grateful to Nathan Okun for his insight into the matter of
external bomb ballistics.
44 Specifics of the crew’s efforts to fix the rudder are nonexistent, but it
must be assumed that standard emergency methods would have been
tried. Japanese emergency steering arrangements are described in detail
in NavTechJap S-01-3, pp. 26–27.
45 Had this not been so, Akagi would have been able to correct her steering
problems almost immediately by rigging emergency manual steering
from below
46 Nagumo Report, p. 20.
47 Japanese rudders were counterbalanced more heavily than Western
rudders, which had the effect of requiring more force from the engines to
turn them. NavTechJap S-01-2, p. 26.
48 It is possible that a repair party was left here to continue their efforts–
restoring steering is a high priority in any DC situation. Akagi lost 115
engineers killed this day, its 36-percent casualty rate making it by far the
most heavily hit department aboard the ship. While it is probable that the
early (and apparently orderly) evacuation of the engine spaces meant that
many engineers may have died topside fighting the fires, it is also known
that a group of them died in the starboard aft engine spaces. Repair crews
would have been prime candidates for becoming casualties as well.
49 Nagumo Report, p. 20.
50 Lord, p. 183; John Toland, Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the
Japanese Empire, 1936–1945 (New York: Random House, 1961), pp.
384–85.
51 Prange, pp. 265–66.
52 It must have been so, otherwise this would have been the quickest way
for the bridge staff to have exited.
53 Prange, p. 266.
54 Lord, p. 184; Fuchida, p. 159.
55 Prange, p. 266; Fuchida, p. 159. It should be noted that Fuchida exited
the ship permanently at 1130. As a result, all of his further comments
regarding damage-control efforts aboard Akagi must have originated with
other survivors and have been relayed to him after the battle, as none of
his observations from this point on could have been firsthand.
56 Prange, p. 266.
57 Nagumo Report, p. 10.
58 Senshi S sho, pp. 376–77. White smoke would likely have been
indicative of very high heat already being generated in the hangars and
beginning to destroy the flight deck caulking and other sealants and
adhesives in the ship. It is also indicative of high-order detonations, such
as from exploding ordnance.
59 Lord, p. 180.
60 Nagumo Report, p. 10.
61 Nagumo Report, p. 20.
62 Lord, p. 187.
63 Lundstrom, p. 370.
64 Had Tomonaga’s force been rearmed by this time, Hiry would
undoubtedly have gone with a combined strike of eighteen Type 99s,
nine Type 97s, and six Zeros, for a total of thirty-three aircraft-a rather
tight deck spot, but still feasible.
65 It is unlikely that this photograph was taken during Hiry ’s transit to the
battle site for a number of reasons. First, Hiry does not appear to have
been the watch carrier on duty during 1 and 3 June, meaning that there
was no reason for her to be launching any planes during this time, let
alone the largish group seen on her fantail in the photo. Second, ASW
patrols from the duty carrier were typically composed of either two or
four aircraft, again in contrast to the group of around a dozen seen here.
The Japanese, as we know, typically did not use deck parks, particularly
with the normal-sized air groups they were currently operating from their
 carriers. The aircraft in this photograph are all in the process of being
launched, making this too large a group for patrol purposes. These
reasons make it seem likely that this photo, if it indeed was taken at
Midway, was, in fact, taken on the day of the battle itself. Detailed
examination of the photograph makes it clear that the aircraft on deck are
Type 99 carrier bombers, recognizable by their fixed landing gear. Hiry
launched Type 99 aircraft only once during the day, during Kobayashi’s
strike. As a result, in the opinion of the authors, as well as other experts
such as John Lundstrom and James Sawruk, if this photograph was
indeed taken during the Midway operation, then this is most likely
Kobayashi’s force taking off.
66 See, for example, John Lundstrom’s First Team, pp. 383–86, for
particulars of the mixture of 242 kg HE and 250 kg semi armor-piercing
bombs used against Yorktown.
67 Nagumo Report, p. 21.

CHAPTER 15: UP THE STEEL STEPS–1100–1200

1 Oide Hisashi, p. 246.
2 Nagumo Report, p. 21.
3 Japanese signal practice specifically anticipated the usage of relay ships.
Communication from Dickson to Parshall, August 20, 2004. Cruiser
Chikuma was the oblique recipient of the first message along this rather
attenuated chain of command. At 1130 Admiral Abe of CruDiv 8,
signaled that he was “Dispatching one destroyer to each of the damaged
carriers, and [then they are] to proceed towards the Main Body.”
Chikuma got the hint, getting underway and leaving her cutter and men
behind with S ry .
4 Lundstrom, First Team, p. 392, gives the name of this Akagi pilot as WO
Nishimori Susumu.
5 Lord, p. 184.
6 Ibid., p. 185.
7 Nagumo Report, p. 21.
8 Ibid., p. 22.
9 Ibid. Abe’s curious mention of only having “part of CruDiv 8” at hand
hints that perhaps Chikuma was still out of position owing to her delays
around S ry .
10 This particular order was repeated at both 1146 and 1147, with the 1146
message detailing two destroyers per ship, whereas the 1147 message
specifically mentions that only one tin can should be left, so that the
 others might be available for attack purposes.
11 Nagumo Report, p. 22.
12 Lundstrom, p. 369. A final torpedo bomber from Akagi was still airborne
and would shortly deposit itself on Hiry ’s flight deck. Counting S ry ’s
Type 2 reconnaissance plane, this brought the actual Japanese total to
sixty-six carrier planes.
13 Not to mention the fact that VMSB-241’s earlier attack on Hiry was
also conducted with carrier-type aircraft, which should have heightened
Japanese suspicions still further.
14 Ugaki, p. 141.
15 We draw heavily on John Lundstrom’s First Team, pp. 345–47, for
details concerning the actions of Hornets air group, as well as on the very
extensive American aviator interviews conducted by Mark Horan.
16 We are grateful to Mark Horan for his insights into these matters.
17 Lundstrom, First Team, p. 365.
18 We are indebted to Mark Horan for his extensive help in reconstructing
the movements of Hornets air group related in the next several
paragraphs, related in a communication to Parshall, August 20, 2004.
19 Lundstrom, First Team, p. 368.
20 Ibid., p. 333.
21 The composition of this group was initially six aircraft. One was to ditch
early, and its crew would be captured (and executed) by the Japanese. A
second aircraft made a forced landing nearer home, and its crew was
eventually rescued. But Ware’s quartet simply disappeared without a
trace.
22 Upon their return to Yorktown, the deck crews had wanted to get the
fighters down as quickly as possible, since they would be running
critically low on fuel. The SBDs were told to orbit. Just as Leslie was
beginning his landing, Kobayashi’s counterstrike was detected, and he
was waved off.
23 Lundstrom, First Team, p. 390.
24 Ibid., p. 373.
25 Ibid., p. 369.
26 VS-6 (nine), VB-6 (seven), CHAG (one), VS-8 (fifteen), VB-8 (fifteen),
VB-3 (fifteen), VS-5 (ten), for a total of seventy-two, ten of which were
currently scouting. We are grateful to Mark Horan for clarifying these
totals.
27 Lord, p. 182.
28 NavTechJap S-84(N), pp. 9–10. Naval aviators were among the first
 personnel ordered over the side of carriers S ry and Kaga, in the
twofold knowledge that they knew little of fighting fires and were a
valuable commodity worth preserving for future battles. This was the
case in the USN as well–aviators were exempt from such duties.
29 For these remarks, we draw on NavTechJap S-84(N) as well as F.T.P.
170(B), which dates from 1944.
30 David Evans and Mark Peattie’s Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and
Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887–1941, in reference to
Japanese fire-control systems, notes on p. 507, that “the navy apparently
did not discover modern systems engineering, the organizational
technique of dividing large technological systems into subsystems with
well-defined interfaces. That technique enabled U.S. engineers to create
incredibly complex technical systems.” This principle appears to have
analogs in Japanese damage control, which failed to deal rigorously with
the topic of how to subdivide and address the topics of flooding and
firefighting.
31 NavTechJap S-06-1, p. 21. It is worth noting that the NavTechJap report
detailing Japanese damage-control methods is a mere fourteen pages in
length, strongly indicating that the U.S. Navy officers compiling it found
little of value to relate.
32 USS Franklin BuShips Report, p. 26.
33 Fuchida, p. 159.
34 Morinaga’s account is given in Lord, pp. 181–82. We interpret his
movements on the basis of his description–although he does not
explicitly state where he emerged from Kaga’s hangars, it seems clear
that he exited the ship from the AA battery deck level, a level above the
upper hangar deck, where the ship’s boats were located.
35 Robert Ballard, Return to Midway (Toronto, Ontario: Madison Press
Books, 1999), pp. 107–8. Akamatsu couldn’t remember rightly whether
it was Hagikaze that picked him up, but given his recollection of
encountering other individuals that we know were rescued by Hagikaze,
like Lieutenant Kunisada, we definitely place him on board this
destroyer.
36 We are grateful to Jeff Palshook, whose intimate knowledge of USS
Nautilus’s movements were crucial in re-creating Kaga’s course track for
this time period. Mr. Palshook’s expertise was instrumental in the
discovery of some of Kaga’s remains in 1999.
37 The BuShips damage report for USS Frank/in, p. 11, explicitly mentions
that her having an armored deck acted as both a firebreak and a
 protection against ordnance fragments from above.
38 Mori’s account of escaping S ry is given in Lord, p. 180.
39 A glance at combat photography from U.S. Navy carriers on fire often
reveals a good many men apparently standing around doing little to
directly combat the blaze. Only so many men can be fighting the fire at
any given time.
40 See appendix 3 for exact figures on crew casualties.
41 Kanao account in Sh gen Midowei Kaisen.
42 Asanoumi apparently survived his ordeal. His name does not appear
among the casualty lists compiled in Sawachi Hisae’s Midowei Kaisen:
Kiroku.
43 This is interesting, as Kanao was apparently near the area where a great
many of the crew exited the vessel. The water, by all rights, should have
been positively swarming with survivors. However, given his miserable
circumstances, Kanao can hardly be blamed for perhaps feeling a bit
abandoned.
44 Fuchida, p. 164, gives a much different account of Yanagimoto’s end.
According to him, a petty officer named Abe, a well-known Navy
wrestling champion, was sent to the bridge to rescue the captain
(apparently about midday), but his aid was refused by the skipper. It may
well be that such an event transpired, but that Kanao and the other men in
the water were unable to witness it. It is clear from both Dull, p. 153, and
the Nagumo Report, p. 10, that Yanagimoto was burned during the attack
and subsequently refused aid. Kanao’s description of the captain’s face
as being bright red is consistent with this. Since Fuchida was not on
board S ry , and did not directly witness the events, we opt for the
unembellished eyewitness accounts of Yanagimoto’s death.

CHAPTER 16: JAPANESE COUNTERSTRIKES–1200–1400

1 E-mail from Sawruk to Parshall, March 13, 2003, source: JD-1.
2 Nagumo Report, pp. 23–24.
3 Ibid., p. 23.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid., p. 10.
6 It has been reported in some accounts (Lord, p. 202) that the plane that
sent this message was the third plane in the 2nd chutai but, in fact, that
particular pilot (PO3c Kuroki Junichi) is known to have died during the
attack. Nakazawa’s plane was not only the third aircraft to make it out of
the attack area, but his observer, Ens. Nakayama Shimematsu, was also
 the commander of the 2nd shotai and the senior surviving aviator from
Kobayashi’s group. It would make sense that the duty of transmitting the
results of the strike would have fallen on Nakayama’s shoulders.
7 Shortly thereafter, at 1252, after a delay of more than half an hour,
Kobayashi’s original 0911 signal was finally sent to Hiry ’s bridge,
belatedly echoing his anonymous subordinate’s subsequent opinion that
the enemy carrier was on fire. Kobayashi’s message is logged in the
Nagumo Report as having been sent at 1201. However, we adhere to
John Lundstrom’s opinion that Kobayashi would not have been in a
position to observe Yorktown burning at this time, because, according to
American records, the attack against her had only just begun and
therefore she could not have been bombed yet. Furthermore, the syntax
of the two messages–first the report that the squadron was attacking,
followed by the specifics of initiating bombing runs–makes more sense if
they are transposed. As a result, we subscribe to the theory that
Kobayashi’s communique was entered incorrectly in the communications
log and was probably sent at 1211. Nagumo Report, p. 23; Lundstrom,
First Team, p. 386.
8 Prange, pp. 316–17.
9 Ibid., p. 317.
10 Osmus would not live out the day. Later in the afternoon, by order of
Arashis skipper, Commander Watanabe Yusumasa, Osmus was executed
and his body thrown over the ship’s side. Commander Watanabe rather
blandly reported on 5 June that the prisoner had “died and was buried at
sea” (Nagumo Report, p. 41), and it is unclear whether he ever made
clear to his superiors the manner of Osmus’s death. Watanabe did not
survive the war. Had he lived, it is likely that he would have met the
hangman’s noose as a war criminal.
11 Lundstrom, pp. 393–94; Lord, p. 214.
12 We know that at 1310 Nagara was able to blinker Nagumo’s
reconnaissance orders to Haruna and Tone, as one would expect. By the
same token, at this very same time Yamaguchi on Hiry sent Nagumo an
important update, also by blinker. The fact that Nagara did not log it till
1345 suggests that it had to be relayed by one or more ships on the
extremity of the formation.
13 Sometimes incorrectly given as Hara Iwai.
14 Either that, or he was flying a different plane.
15 Lundstrom, p. 393.
16 Hy d Nisohachi monograph prepared for Parshall.
17 Tomonaga may have been right. The Type 97’s normal range was 528
nm, with a maximum range of 1,075. With only 30 percent of his normal
fuel, he probably had a range between 160 and 320 nm. If so, it is
conceivable that he might have made it home, if he had husbanded his
fuel.
18 Lord, p. 215.
19 Ibid.; Lundstrom, First Team, p. 394.
20 Ibid., p. 372.
21 For details of this engagement in this and the following paragraphs, we
draw from Lundstrom’s First Team, p. 372, and Cressman et al., pp.
114–15.
22 In light of Minegishi’s subsequent sortie, it is possible that he had
simply shot off all of his ammunition, rather than receiving particularly
heavy damage.
23 Cressman et al., p. 115.
24 Lundstrom, First Team, p. 376.
25 For the description of Kobayashi’s attack, we draw heavily from the
definitive account in Lundstrom’s First Team, pp. 377–87.
26 Shot down and killed were PO2c Todaka Noboru, Sea1c Yoshimoto
Suekichi, and PO3c CHiy shima Yutaka.
27 The identity of this pilot is unknown. However, judging from his angle
of attack, he was probably from Kobayashi’s 1st chutai. It should further
be noted that the diagram in Hugh Bicheno’s Midway, p. 157, which
ascribes the identities of the first two aviators to attack as being PO3c
Koizumi Naoshi and PO1c Imaizumi Tamotsu, is speculative and
unsubstantiated in the Japanese records.
28 This photo is reversed in many publications, but is shown here as
photographed from Astoria, which was off Yorktown’s port quarter
during the attack.
29 Nakazawa’s bomb had, in fact, penetrated the ship’s stack uptakes and
caused serious damage to her boiler spaces below.
30 This signal originated using Kobayashi’s personal call sign. Lundstrom,
First Team, p. 386. Given that Kobayashi’s men had not actually
commenced their attack until 0911, it is likely that 0901 was either a
transmission or decoding error for 0911 (1211 local).
31 American aviator accounts make it likely that Kobayashi’s plane had
been forced to jettison his weapon while under attack from Yorktown’s
CAP, prior to the commencement of the bombing runs by his men. An
unarmed kanbaku at low altitude was spotted observing the progress of
 the attack at about this time. So preoccupied by the attack was this
aircraft’s crew that neither of the crew apparently observed an American
fighter that approached undetected to within spitting distance, only to
discover that his guns had jammed. This same Japanese aircraft was
subsequently shot down by a pair of VF-6 planes piloted by Lt. (jg)
Thomas C. Provost III and Ens. James A Halford Jr. Lundstrom, First
Team, pp. 386–87. The evidence suggests that this plane was that of
Kobayashi.
32 Cressman et al., p. 121.
33 The large wreckage artifact from Kaga (comprising a large section of
hangar wall and two 25-mm gun tubs) that was discovered off of Midway
in September 1999, was almost certainly formed in this manner.
34 In fact, the portrait may have been moved forward already. The
wardroom was located portside, just forward of amidships, on the same
deck as the anchors but almost directly under the fires, and had been in
danger for quite a while.
35 Based on Nautilus’s observations of her during this time.
36 Prange, p. 310.
37 Senshi S sho, p. 376.
38 Sawachi, p. 397. We are grateful to Jean-Paul Masson for his
translations of Sawachi’s casualty rosters, as well as his knowledge of the
Imperial Navy’s Register of Active Naval Officers (Gen-eki Kaigun
Shikan Meibo).
39 Kunisada account, Sh gen Midowei Kaisen.
40 Kunisada’s account contains interesting anomalies. He states that he
made his way to the command spaces (which were generally abreast the
No. 2 elevator well and higher up in the superstructure). But it is clear
that he eventually found himself below the lower hangar deck levels, near
the crew’s quarters, from which he exited the ship onto her antitorpedo
bulge. It can only be surmised that Kunisada began his account already
on the lower hangar deck level and from there was unable to make his
way higher in the ship.
41 It was the Japanese custom to refer to themselves by their rank or post,
rather than in the first person.
42 Makishima Teiuchi, Middoue no Higeki (“The Tragedy of Midway”)
(Tokyo: Sh setsu, 1956), p. 188.
43 Ibid.
44 At this point in the war, U.S. Navy enemy ship recognition manuals still
showed Kaga and Akagi as having their older triple flight deck
 configurations.
45 Nautilus action report.
46 Ibid.
47 Lord, p. 213.
48 Mitoya account, p. 155.
49 An analysis of the buoyancy of an Mk 14 Mod 3 with Mk 15 Mod 1
TNT warhead was performed for the authors by Fred Milford, a noted
expert in WWII torpedoes. His computations reveal that Kunisada’s and
Mitoya’s accounts of the American torpedo not sinking after hitting Kaga
are credible from a buoyancy standpoint, provided the warhead did
indeed separate from the afterbody of the torpedo.
50 Nautilus action report; “Report of First War Patrol, July 16, 1942,”
Serial 0801.
51 Samuel Eliot Morison is the most prominent example. It would appear
that by some coincidence a new surge of the fires inside occurred about
this time. Brockman’s impression of many men abandoning ship by
“going over the side” was certainly true enough, as Kaga’s alarmed
survivors scrambled to get out of the way of the incoming torpedoes.
52 Kimata Jiro, Nihon K k Senshi (“Japanese Carrier Battle History”)
(Tokyo: Kokusho, 1977), p. 292.
53 Nautilus action report.
54 Ibid.
55 Kunisada account in Sh gen Midowei Kaisen.
56 Ibid.
57 Yoshino Haruo account, Hoover Institution Archives, Bruning
Collection.
58 Maeda Takeshi account, Hoover Institution Archives, Bruning
Collection.
59 Ibid.
60 Maeda Takeshi account, Hoover Institution Archives, Bruning
Collection.
61 Kanao account, Sh gen Midowei Kaisen.

CHAPTER 17: LAST GASP–1400–1800

1 Naval War College Analysis, p. 137.
2 Ibid., p. 140.
3 Ibid. She was actually at 31-10’N, 178-20’W
4 VS-5 action, p. 1.
5 Nagumo Report, p. 26.
6 Ibid., 1202 entry.
7 Prange, p. 265. Kaga, for instance, had a total of nineteen medical
personnel on board ship, and it must be presumed that some of them were
killed or injured during the initial attacks. It is possible, too, that others
died in the sick bay, much as happened on board the Akagi, where the
ship’s hospital was cut off by advancing flames and all the staff and
patients perished. It should be noted, though, that the casualty records for
Akagi contained in Sawachi Hisae’s comprehensive Midowei Kaisen:
Kiroku do not mention a senior medical officer being killed. It is likely,
therefore, that the ship’s surgeon survived.
8 Kunisada account, Sh gen Midowei Kaisen.
9 Monograph No. 88, p. 47; Fuchida, p. 183.
10 Monograph No. 88, p. 51; Fuchida, p. 183.
11 Nagumo Report, p. 26.
12 Ibid., p. 26.
13 Ibid., pp. 26–27.
14 Again, we refuse to accept Dallas Isom’s assertion that the American
carriers were steaming without escorts. Until such movements of the
American carriers are substantiated in the American warship records
from the battle, we will continue to dismiss these assertions.
15 Nagumo Report, p. 29.
16 Monograph No. 93, p. 46.
17 Not all of Tomonaga’s surviving aircraft landed at this time. The pair of
Kaga Zeros under PO1c Yamamoto Akira remained aloft to augment the
ship’s CAP
18 We draw extensively from Lundstrom’s First Team, pp. 398–411 and
Cressman et al., pp. 128–32 for the details of Tomonaga’s strike on
Yorktown.
19 Lord, p. 217.
20 Lundstrom, p. 399. The roster for the 1st chutai reveals the trailing
aircraft likely would have been bayashi’s or Suzuki’s.
21 However, both American pilots survived. Cressman et al., p. 130.
22 Lundstrom, First Team, p. 400; Cressman et al., p. 130.
23 Lundstrom, First Team, p. 401.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid., pp. 401–2.
26 These were fighters being vectored from Enterprise in support of
Yorktown. Lundstrom, First Team, p. 405.
27 Ens. John Adams. Lundstrom, p. 403.
28 Lundstrom, First Team, p. 402; Lord, p. 219.
29 Lord, p. 218.
30 These were flown by Ens. Mel Roach, and Lt. Elbert Scott McCuskey.
Lundstrom, First Team, p. 404.
31 Lundstrom, First Team, p. 405.
32 Ibid., p. 407.
33 Ibid., p. 406; Lord, p. 222.
34 Nagumo Report, p. 26.
35 Lundstrom, First Team, p. 406; Lord, pp. 219–20; Cressman et al., pp.
131–32.
36 J. H. and W H. Belote, Titans of the Seas (New York: Harper and Row,
1975), p. 125.
37 Cressman et al., p. 132.
38 Nagumo Report, p. 27. This message was not received by Nagumo until
1635.
39 Nagumo Report, p. 28.
40 Nagumo Report track chart; Nagumo Report, p. 28.
41 Nagumo Report, p. 27.
42 Ibid.
43 Cressman et al., p. 136; Lundstrom, First Team, p. 411.
44 Cressman et al., p. 136. As it developed, there were five additional SBDs
that had been mechanical strikes or aborts from the morning mission, had
been repaired, fully fueled, armed with 1,000-pound bombs, and were
even manned, but were left on the hangar deck because Captain
Browning failed to include them in the tactical organization–a rather
glaring oversight. Horan, communication to Parshall, 23 August 2004.
45 Cressman et al., p. 136.
46 Ibid.; Lundstrom, First Team, p. 411.
47 Cressman et al., p. 136.
48 Lundstrom, First Team, p. 412.
49 Nagumo Report, p. 27.
50 We deduce from the fact that Chikuma was known to carry five aircraft,
including three Type 0 recon floatplanes–her Nos. 1, 4, and 5 aircraft. By
process of elimination, her No. 2 aircraft was a Type 95.
51 Nagumo Report, p. 27.
52 Ibid., p. 28.
53 Cressman et al., p. 135.
54 Lundstrom, pp. 413–14.
55 This would appear to explain the northward jog of Nagara’s track shown
 in the Nagumo Report at about this same time.
56 Both Flaherty and Gaido were tied to five-gallon kerosene drums filled
with water and dumped overboard. Exactly when they were killed
remains open to debate, although it was apparently well after the battle
was over, the deed apparently occurring after Makigumo was ordered
north to participate in operations in the Aleutians. Makigumo was
assigned to these operations on 8 June and radioed on 9 June the full
details of the intelligence gathered from the two prisoners (Prange, p.
253; Prados, p. 329; Cressman et al., pp. 114–15; Ultra
Intercepts–Makigumo entries). No mention of the fate of these two
American prisoners appears in the Nagumo Report.
57 Nagumo Report, p. 29.
58 Ibid.
59 Nagumo Report, p. 9.
60 Nagasuki account, Sh gen Midowei Kaisen, p. 325.
61 Ultra Intercepts, designated as “Orange Translations of Japanese
Intelligence Intercepts,” NARA (Archives II).
62 Nagumo Report, p. 9.
63 Kanao account.
64 Senshi S sho, pp. 376–77.
65 It must be noted that Lieutenant Naganuma’s account, while fascinating,
needs to be used with caution. Like many survivor accounts, Naganuma’s
contains few concrete time references, making the placement of his
remembrances within the overall narrative a difficult proposition. Yet (as
will be seen), Naganuma was quite clear that he escaped S ry only
shortly before she sank. As such, despite the difficulty we have in
comprehending how men could have actually survived eight hours in S
ry ’s engine spaces, we adhere to Naganuma’s word in this matter,
meaning that even as Kanao was abandoning S ry late in the day,
Naganuma and some of the engine room crews were apparently still
alive.
66 Lord, p. 232.
67 Photographs of Hiry taken after her bombing make it clear that no
planes were on deck when she was fatally attacked at around 1700.
68 Lord, pp. 232–33.
69 Nagumo Report, pp. 26–27.
70 Enterprise report.
71 Ibid., p. 137.
72 Nagumo Report, p. 29.
73 Monograph No. 93, p. 45, notes that it was Hiry ’s intent to launch this
plane shortly. However, the photographic record of Hiry after the attack
makes it clear that this plane was most likely not on deck when the ship
was bombed. Given that this aircraft would have needed several minutes
to get warmed up before launch in any case, turning back to the east so
early seems unnecessary.
74 USSBS 464, Nav. 106, p. 460.
75 Enterprise action report; Cressman et al., p. 137; Lord, p. 235;
Lundstrom, First Team, p. 414.
76 Lundstrom, First Team, pp. 414–15, Cressman et al., pp. 137–38.
77 Gallaher noted that Hiry ’s turn completely threw off his aim. Horan,
communication to Parshall, 24 August 2004.
78 VB-6 action report; Lord, p. 235; Cressman et al., p. 137.
79 Cressman et al., pp. 137–38.
80 The damage chart in the Nagumo Report indicates that bomb hits on
Hiry were received as far aft as the midships elevator, but this is not
substantiated by the photographic record, which make it clear that no
bombs landed further aft than Hiry ’s forward elevator.
81 Most accounts say that the entire elevator was lodged against the bridge,
but a careful examination of the photographic evidence reveals that the
fragment upended against Hiry ’s island is too small to have been the
entire elevator. Whether the remainder fell back into the elevator well, or
was hurled over the side, is unclear.
82 Lord, p. 236.
83 Account of Arimura Yoshikazu, letter to Parshall, January 27, 2002. We
are grateful to Koganemaru Takashi and Alan Clark for their assistance
in translating Mr. Arimura’s account.
84 Lord, p. 236.
85 Lord, p. 236; Mandai account given in Hiry prisoner interrogation.
86 Lord, pp. 239–40.
87 Prange, p. 290.
88 Lord, p. 236.
89 Arimura account.
90 Prange, p. 290.
91 Lord, p. 236. Other accounts say that her firefighting system was
disabled. However, judging by Arimura’s account, it would appear that
Hiry possessed some fire fighting capability, at least initially.
92 Arimura account; Naval War College Analysis, p. 142; Nagumo Report,
p. 62.
 93 Sweeney’s flight of four had taken off from Midway at 1550, and had
subsequently been caught up by two additional stragglers whose engine
troubles had delayed their departure for half an hour. Cressman et al., p.
139.
94 Lord, p. 237.
95 Nagumo Report, p. 30.
96 Kawaguchi statement, USSBS, p. 4.
97 Blakey’s B-17s would claim one hit on the CV, one on a destroyer, and
two near misses on the CV, supposedly leaving her smoking and aflame.
Sweeney’s bombers claimed two hits on cruisers but did not observe all
of their drops. Naval War College Analysis, pp. 118–19.
98 Nagumo Report, p. 34.

CHAPTER 18: SCUTTLINGS–1800–DAWN, 5 JUNE

1 Naval War College Analysis, pp. 140–41.
2 Cressman et al., p. 140; Lord, pp. 240–41.
3 Prange, p. 289; Cressman et al., p. 140; also, Lundstrom, unpublished
Fletcher manuscript.
4 Lord, p. 256; Cressman et al., p. 146; Naval War College Analysis, p.
143.
5 In fact, these were merely the remnants of Hiry ’s CAP, which had been
launched in the midafternoon.
6 Nagumo Report, p. 31.
7 Hy d monograph for Parshall; running depth for torpedoes intended for
capital ships was five to seven meters.
8 Nagumo Report, p. 36.
9 The term “Long Lance” was never used by the Japanese, and was
advanced postwar largely by Samuel Eliot Morison. However, Morison
likely derived the phrase from a captured Japanese torpedo document that
referred obliquely to the same term. “Battle Lessons Learned in the
Greater East Asia War (Torpedoes),” JICPOA, vol. 6, Item 5782. We are
grateful to David Dickson and Brooks Rowlett for their insights on this
matter.
10 Kondo mentions the moonlight as an aid to his forces in his 1750
dispatch. Nagumo Report, p. 30.
11 bid., p. 34.
12 Ibid., p. 31.
13 Ibid., p. 34.
14 Nagumo Report, p. 30.
15 Ibid., pp. 29–30.
16 Prange, p. 308; Nagumo Report, pp. 9–10; Lord, pp. 245–46.
17 Senshi S sho, pp. 376–77.
18 USSBS, vol. 1, p. 2.
19 Note the various recollections of Amagai with regards to when he
originally went into the water, as well as when he finally ordered the
emperor’s portrait removed. In particular, it is Commander Amagai who
steadfastly maintained that Hiry had radar during the battle, which is
untrue.
20 Senshi S sho, p. 389. Paul Dull’s account, p. 153, erroneously states that
it was Nagumo preparing to reboard S ry from Nagara. This translation
error, in turn, threw off H. P. Willmott’s subsequent analysis of Nagara’s
(and by extension, Nagumo’s) movements at around this time.
21 Makishima, p. 191; Lord, p. 246.
22 Nagumo Report, p. 35.
23 Kanao account in Sh gen Midowei Kaisen.
24 It must be noted that Naganuma’s account begs scrutiny. It is difficult to
believe that he and his men were actually able to survive in the engine
spaces, under such terrible conditions, for as long as they did. The
possibility certainly exists that Naganuma managed to escape
considerably earlier and spent a longer time in the water than he recalled
later.
25 Kanao account in Sh gen Midowei Kaisen. It is worth noting that
Kanao’s recollection of “three” torpedoes jibes exactly with Executive
Officer Ohara’s initial, albeit later recanted, claim that three torpedoes
finished off S ry . Makishima, p. 183, also confirms the angle and
details of S ry ’s sinking, without explicitly mentioning scuttling.
26 See appendix 6 for details on S ry ’s casualties.
27 Letter from Yoshino Haruo to Parshall/Tully, March 27, 2000.
28 Robert Ballard, Return to Midway (Toronto, Ontario: Madison Press
Books, 1999), p. 111.
29 Yoshino Haruo’s March 27, 2000 letter.
30 This description of Kaga draws on the recollections of Yoshino Haruo,
made in separate statements to both Jon Parshall and Chuck Haberlein of
the Naval Historical Center.
31 Kunisada account in Sh gen Midowei Kaisen.
32 Details on Kaga’s casualties can be found in appendix 6.
33 Ballard, p. 111.
34 We are grateful to Chuck Haberlein of the Naval Historical Center for
 providing us with a hand-drawn sketch from Yoshino Haruo depicting
Kaga’ general condition at the time of her sinking.
35 Akamatsu’s account states that it was Maikaze that did the deed, firing a
single torpedo that broke Kaga in half. However, in our opinion,
Akamatsu has clearly been shown to be an unreliable witness (among
other things claiming to have been on combat flights during the morning
that he never participated in), and, as such, his account must be used
carefully. Given the agreement between Yoshino (in three separate
accounts) and Kunisada regarding who was doing the firing, we tend to
discount Akamatsu’s account, although it is certainly possible that
Maikaze fired as well. However, all accounts agree she sank upright and
did not capsize.
36 Yoshino Haruo letter to Parshall, Kunisada account in Sh gen Midowei
Kaisen; Ballard, p. 111; Maeda Takeshi and Morinaga Takayoshi, in
separate accounts given to Ron Werneth, both stated explicitly that they
witnessed Kaga being scuttled by torpedo.
37 Kunisada account, Sh gen Midowei Kaisen.
38 Ron Werneth, interview with Maeda Takeshi, e-mail to Tully, July 3,
2004. We are grateful to Mr. Werneth for providing us with excerpts of
his extensive interviews taken from his forthcoming manuscript.
39 Ron Werneth interview with Takayoshi Morinaga, e-mail to Tully, July
3, 2004.
40 Commander Nakasugi Seiji account, Sh gen Midowei Kaisen.
41 Kunisada account, Sh gen Midowei Kaisen.
42 Japanese carrier air group operational logs, JD-1.
43 Cressman et al., p. 140.
44 Lord, pp. 239–40.
45 Nagumo Report, p. 34.
46 Ibid.
47 Monograph No. 93, p. 43.
48 Nagumo Report, p. 36. Ultra Intercepts–Akagi.
49 Ariga’s message text specifies “1st section of DesDiv 4 [Arashi,
Nowaki] is about 7 kilometers south of Akagi; 2nd section of DesDiv 17
[Hamakaze, Isokaze] is 7 kilometers north of Akagi, patrolling the E-W
line. The second section of DesDiv 4 [Hagikaze, Maikaze] is patrolling
within a 5-kilometer circle of Akagi.” Ultra Intercepts–Akagi. The fact
that this message listed Sixth Fleet as a primary addressee may also have
communicated concerns on the part of Ariga that his ships, and the
derelicts, might be endangered by their own submarines.
50 Dull, p. 155.
51 It is intriguing to speculate on whether Yamamoto’s action regarding
Akagi is perhaps a clue that Nagumo’s earlier disposal of S ry and
Kaga had added to the increasing perception of Combined Fleet’s staff
that the commander of Kid Butai had prematurely given up hope.
52 Dull, p. 155.
53 Prange, p. 321.
54 Lord, p. 247. Aoki was retired from active service in October 1942 but
was then recalled in October 1943 to command a series of air groups,
before being demobilized in 1945.
55 Norman Polmar, Aircraft Carriers: A Graphic History of Carrier
Aviation and Its Influence on World Events (New York: Doubleday Co.,
1969), p. 224; Fuchida, p. 172. The Nagumo Report, p. 9, gives this time
as being 2103, but this is likely a typo. This can also be inferred by the
fact that at 2146 Yugumo and the other destroyers were actively involved
in fighting Hiry ’s fires, which could not have been accomplished had
Hiry remained underway at high speed. Nagumo Report, p. 36.
56 Nagumo Report, p. 36.
57 Ibid., p. 9. We can see no reason why Hiry had developed a list, other
than the temporary shipping of firefighting water–a phenomenon that
occurred to other carriers during the war engaged in intensive firefighting
activities. She sustained no known underwater damage, and subsequent
photos of her show her on an even keel. Furthermore, those of her
engineering staff who survived, who were surely in a position to
comment on her watertight integrity prior to leaving the vessel, make no
mention of pervasive flooding before she was scuttled.
58 Nagumo Report, p. 36.
59 At grid position HE E A 55 (28°-50’N, 179°-50’W). Ultra
Intercepts–Kaga. National Archives. It is unknown if this signal was sent
in response to an earlier inquiry by Yamamoto, but this appears likely.
60 Nagumo Report, p. 30. This report had been transmitted at 1755.
61 Nagumo Report, p. 34.
62 Ibid., p. 35.
63 Ugaki, p. 145.
64 Ibid., p. 151.
65 Ibid., p. 146.
66 Nagumo Report, p. 36.
67 Ibid.
68 Nagumo’s subsequent messages reveal that he was probably still holding
 out hope for Akagi as well.
69 Naguma Report, pp. 36–37.
70 Ibid, p. 9.
71 Prange, p. 333, from an interview with Spruance, September 5, 1964.
72 Ugaki, p. 145.
73 Nagumo Report, p. 37.
74 Prange, p. 319, per interview with Watanabe, November 24, 1964.
75 Ibid.
76 Agawa, p. 321.
77 Prange, p. 319.
78 Ibid.; Ugaki, p. 145.
79 Nagumo Report, p. 38.
80 Monograph No. 93, p. 59, confirms DesDiv 8 was left behind because
Kurita was making thirty-three knots. The destroyers were capable of
similar speed, but it may well have been that they were concerned about
having enough fuel to execute a sustained flank speed run to the east.
81 Nagumo Report, p. 37.
82 Dull, p. 147. The diagram in Dull’s book shows Kurita breaking off to
the northwest at 2245, but this doesn’t jibe with the order log. Ugaki, p.
152, Monograph No. 93, and Senshi S sho (p. 477) all agree that it was
0230 when Kurita turned away. As a result, his force may well have
gotten closer than fifty nautical miles to Midway.
83 Senshi S sho, p. 476.
84 Senshi S sho, pp. 475–77.
85 Prange, pp. 323–24.
86 Ibid., p. 324.
87 Theodore Roscoe, United States Submarine Operations in World War II
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1949), p. 131; Naval War College
Analysis, p. 153.
88 Lord, p. 258.
89 War Diary of Sixth Fleet, Midway Operation, WDC 160268.
90 Prange, p. 322; Lord, p. 258.
91 Cressman et al., p. 142.
92 Ibid., p. 141.
93 Ibid.
94 Orange Translations, Crane Materials. Record Group 38, section 370
National Archives. This report, not reproduced in prior accounts because
it was “omitted” from the Nagumo War Diary, was also intercepted by
American radio intelligence units and subsequently decoded. Published
here for the first time, its contents reveal valuable clues of the true state
of Nagumo’s thinking at this critical hour and even two near-final resting
positions of some of the carriers:
YAYO 2 # 566 (1-4) of 5 June, 2330
2330 5 June,
Striking Force Battle Report
Part I:
June 5 carried out air attack on Midway as scheduled. Shot down about
30 enemy planes and though inflicted considerable damage to equipment,
details are not clear. Even after the attack, it seemed that the enemy was
able to use the air field.
Part II:
From 0400–0730 more than 100 enemy planes attacked, among which
more than 50 were shot down. Even though we avoided all the torpedoes,
because of the attack of the shipboard bombers we received many direct
hits. As it was impossible to continue the battle because of fires, I gave the
order to retreat and with 6 destroyers in company shifted flag to the
Nagara. With the remainder of this force, proceeded towards the enemy
striking force and attacked. An aircraft carrier of the Hornet class received
considerable damage with 2 torpedo hits. At 1430, because of an extremely
serious attack by enemy shipboard bombers, we sustained great damage. It
was a terrific battle. The air attack continued in succession until about 1600.
Part III:
After retiring to the northwest, we turned to attack. This force’s 1800
position was TO A RU 32, course 320, speed 20 knots. The enemy’s main
force consisted of 3 Hornet type aircraft carriers (one of which was listing,
burning and drifting), 2 aircraft carriers of uncertain type, 6 heavy cruisers
and a number of destroyers. 1500 position of 10 ships TO SU WA 14,
course 280, speed 24 knots. (30°-55’N, 176°-05’W).
Part IV:
Although the fire on the Hiry has slackened a bit, she lies in the
enemy’s track and the fire cannot be brought under control. If it were
possible to put out the fire, she might be able to get under way. She is under
escort of two destroyers and retiring to the Northwest.
The S ry sank and the Kaga also sank. The Akagi is burning fiercely
and is not expected to be brought under control. Getting under way is
impossible. She is at approximate position TO E WE 43 under escort of two
destroyers. (30°-40’N, 178°-50’W).
95 Dull, p. 158; Nagumo Report, p. 9.
96 This is an informed guess on our part, with the forward elevator
slammed up against the front of the bridge, this is the only place on the
island that such an address to the assembled masses could reasonably
have been made.
97 Lord, p. 249.
98 Fuchida, p. 173.
99 Lord, p. 250.
100 Prange, p. 313.
101 Arimura account, Sh gen Midowei Kaisen.
102 Makishima, p. 193.
103 Japanese carrier air group records JD-1 reel); Prange, p. 312.
104 Prange, p. 312.
105 Lord, p. 250.
106 Makishima, p. 195.
107 Makishima, p. 194; Prange, p. 313; Lord, p. 250.
108 Lord, p. 250.
109 Fuchida, p.173.
110 Lord, p. 250.
111 Makishima, p. 195.
112 Ibid.
113 Lord, p. 251.
114 Nagumo Report, p. 10.
115 Hisashi, pp. 291–94.
116 This is educated guesswork, but it fits the evidence at hand. Hiry
would take four hours to sink from this hit, meaning that whatever
flooding occurred as a result was not sufficient to sink the vessel
 quickly. A direct hit amidships would have caused flooding radiating
in all directions from the hit. A hit in the bow, by contrast, could only
cause meaningful flooding through the comparatively smaller cross-
section bulkheads immediately astern the hit. Indeed, when Hiry was
photographed an hour and a half later, she looked to be in relatively
good shape–settling by the bow slightly, but on an even keel and in no
great danger of foundering immediately.
117 Hisashi, p. 295.
118 Ibid. Several of these men would later be rescued by the Americans and
would readily attest to their utter confusion as to what Makigumo
intended by signaling them, and their disgust with their countrymen at
being left for dead.
119 Prange, pp. 327–28.
120 Ibid., p. 328.
121 Ibid.
122 We are grateful to Dan Rush, U.S. Navy (Ret.), for his reminiscences
of personal conversations with Nagumo’s youngest son, Dr. Nagumo
Shinji, in a series of e-mails to Parshall dated May 27–June 3, 2001.
123 Even had this transpired, the authors doubt highly whether Akagi would
have been useful for anything other than scrapping in any case.
124 Ultra Intercepts–Akagi.
125 Prange, p. 320.
126 Ibid.; Ugaki, p. 148.
127 Prange, p. 320.
128 Ugaki, p. 148.
129 Prange, p. 320.
130 Senshi S sho, p. 378; Jiro Kimata, Nihon K k Senshi Japanese Carrier
Battle History) (Tokyo: Kokusho, 1977), p. 294.
131 Kimata, p. 294.
132 Makishima, p. 199; Kimata, p. 295; and Commander Nakasugi Seiji
account, Sh gen Midowei Kaisen. It should be noted that for the sake
of simplicity, we have listed each carrier’s complete toll of casualties,
including aviators that may not have actually been lost on board ship,
or who subsequently died aboard other vessels.

CHAPTER 19: RETREAT

1 Haruna and Kirishima most likely put up Type 95s for ASW work as
well.
2 Ugaki, p. 154; Monograph No. 88, pp. 40–42.
3 Ugaki, p. 154.
4 Naval War College Analysis, p. 150.
5 Ugaki, p. 164.
6 Ugaki, p. 153, mentions that the rendezvous process took as long as from
0800–1700. The majority of the force most likely did not rendezvous
until around 1300, with some of the destroyers carrying survivors joining
later.
7 Nagumo Report, p. 38.
8 We wish to thank Osamu Tagaya for his information regarding the
aircrew involved.
9 Prange, p. 312.
10 Lord, p. 262.
11 Makishima, p. 197; Lord, p. 263.
12 CinCpac conf. let., File No A8/(37)/JAP/ (26.2), Serial 01848, of June
28, 1942, hereafter “Interrogation of Hiry survivors,” p. 3.
13 The B4Y1 sported spatted landing gear similar to the D3A.
14 Makishima, p. 197; Lord, p. 264.
15 Interrogation of Hiry survivors, p. 3.
16 Ibid. Determining where Hiry sank, as opposed to when, is more
difficult. There is the official position that Makigumo reported scuttling
her: 31°-27’N, 179° pt-23’W Yet, after this torpedo hit, the Hiry drifted
almost another four hours with the wind and current before she sank. The
next and best fix is provided of course by H sh ’s important sighting
and photographs at 0720: 32° pt-10’N, 178°-50’E. Finally, at 0820,
scarcely an hour before she sank, U.S. fliers sighted her with bow
pointed 245 degrees, bearing 335 degrees, 250 miles from Midway. In
reviewing these, it is clear that the Makigumo position contains an error
of 179 for 178 degrees, a discrepancy that had been noted before, but not
resolved. The H sh ’s sighting position allows a ruling strongly in favor
of the 178 longitude interpretation. The H sh position also corresponds
more closely with the chart position on the Nagumo chart, which is
31°-38’N, 178°-51’W, and implies that the chart positions were worked
out retroactively (and are perhaps “more correct,” as the American
editors for Fuchida’s book concluded).
17 Ibid.
18 Cressman et al., p. 175; Interrogation of Hiry survivors, p. 3.
19 Interestingly, none of Hiry ’s POWs wanted it to be known that they
had survived the battle or wished to be returned to Japan, preferring to let
it be believed that they had perished in battle.
20 Willmott, Barrier and the javelin, p. 483.
21 Prange, pp. 324–35.
22 Willmott, Barrier and the javelin, pp. 483–84.
23 As recently as 1997, the Naval War College issued a report entitled “The
Operational Failure of U.S. Submarines at the Battle of Midway-and
Implications for Today,” Naval War College Joint Military Operations
Department, May 1996.
24 Cressman et al., p. 217; Lord, p. 262.
25 Cressman et al., p. 143.
26 Willmott, Barrier and the javelin, p. 488.
27 Cressman et al., p. 146.
28 Nagumo Report, p. 38.
29 Orange Intercepts, H sh .
30 Nagumo Report, p. 38.
31 HYPO placed a sub just northwest of Midway, receiving an urgent
message from Tokyo and Sixth Fleet at 2013.
32 Naval War College Analysis, p. 163.
33 Cressman et al., p. 143.
34 Ultra Intercepts–Mikuma.
35 Cressman et al., p. 143; Prange, p. 325.
36 Cressman et al., p. 144; Mikuma gives the time of the attack as 0800,
and counted eight bombers involved. Ultra Intercepts–Mikuma.
37 Cressman et al., p. 144.
38 The message sent by Mikuma at 0905 after the Vindicator and B-17
attacks of 5 June clearly indicates that no damage was received by those
attacks. Senshi S sho, p. 486, also denies it, as does the track record of
movement (TROM) of Mogami. The popular folklore surrounding
Fleming’s attack was mainly based on the recollection of Mogamis
captain, Soji, as reported in postwar interviews that then found their way
into the USMC monograph “Marines at Midway,” by Robert Heinl.
However, in time it was learned that Soji was speaking of a similar
incident that occurred off of Guadalcanal in November 1942. A further
contributing cause was a misinterpretation of debris atop Mikuma’s No. 4
turret in some of the photographs taken of her after she was bombed.
Intriguingly, the claim never had much support even from the U.S. side,
as neither the MAG-22 nor VMSB-241 action reports make any mention
of it. Nor do wartime or immediate postwar publications mention the
incident. We are grateful to Mark Horan for his insights on these matters,
based on firsthand interviews with American crewmen in four of the
 participating aircraft, in a correspondence to Tully dated May 2, 2004.
39 Ultra Intercepts–Mikuma.
40 Ibid.
41 Morison, p. 148; Prange, p. 369.
42 Naval War College Analysis, p. 158.
43 “Significant PBY sightings of Japanese Carriers late 4-5 June [1942],”
compiled by John Lundstrom, sent to Tony Tully, March 15, 2000.
44 Cressman et al., p. 146.
45 Cressman et al., p. 149; Prange, p. 331.
46 Cressman et al., p. 149; Lundstrom, First Team, p. 421.
47 Cressman et al., p. 149.
48 Ibid. Lundstrom, First Team, p. 421.
49 Cressman et al., p. 149.
50 Ibid.
51 Hornet action report, June 8, 1942.
52 Nagumo Report attack diagrams for Tanikaze.
53 Action Report, Bombing Squadron Three, 10 June 1942.
54 Ibid.
55 Cressman, et al., p. 151.
56 Naval War College Analysis, p. 164
57 Their position at 2130 was 31°-10’N, 172°-30’E; Ultra
Intercepts–Arashio.
58 “Significant PBY sightings of Japanese Carriers late 4 June-5 June.”
59 Some sources mention that Chikuma’s cutter was returned at this time as
well, but we adhere to Senshi S sho’s interpretation (pp. 376–77) that the
boat had been abandoned. It is unlikely that Isokaze would have been
able to stow an extra cutter in addition to her own ship’s boats.
60 Nagumo Report entries for afternoon 5 June.
61 Senshi S sho, p. 489; Ugaki, p. 153. Just exactly what American aircraft
carried out this attack remains unclear.
62 Ugaki, pp. 153–54; also track chart in Nagumo Report.

CHAPTER 20: AND DEATH TO THE CRIPPLES …

1 Lacroix and Wells, p. 488.
2 Derived from scheduled rendezvous mentioned in previous radio signals
(see chapter 18), and the fact the destroyers were already with the force
when sighted in morning.
3 Some of these aircraft were from Hornet, having landed on Enterprise
after the preceding evening’s strike. Lundstrom, First Team, p. 422.
4 Cressman et al., p. 153.
5 Lundstrom, First Team, p. 422.
6 Cressman et al., p. 154.
7 Ibid.
8 Ugaki, p. 155.
9 Cressman et al., pp. 154–155.
10 The planes in question were Ens. Don Griswold, of VS-8, and Ens.
Clarence Vammen, of VS-6. Ibid., p. 155.
11 Lacroix and Wells, p. 488.
12 This claim is based on inference from the fact that only one hit was
scored on this pair of Japanese destroyers, namely on Arashio, at about
1450, hence no hits were scored during the attack in question.
Furthermore, Bombing Eight’s action report mentions heavy strafing of
the destroyers.
13 Cressman et al., p. 155.
14 Ugaki, p. 155. As has been noted, the IJN claim was close to accurate,
but only two, not three, aircraft had been splashed.
15 Cressman, p. 155; Lundstrom, First Team, p. 423.
16 Lundstrom, First Team, p. 423.
17 Cressman et al., p. 155; Lundstrom, First Team, p. 423.
18 Ugaki, p. 155.
19 Enterprise and Yorktown action reports; Cressman et al., p. 155;
Lundstrom, First Team, p. 424.
20 Ibid.
21 Mogami TROM, Reel JD-1; Lacroix and Wells, p. 448.
22 Enterprise, “Air Battle of the Pacific,” June 4-6, report of June 15, 1942.
23 Statement of Lt. (jg.) Kawaguchi Taketoshi, acting damage-control
officer of Mikuma in War History Office files, letter to Walter Lord,
January 22, 1966. Hereafter “Kawaguchi statement.”
24 Lacroix and Wells, p. 488.
25 Ibid.
26 Ugaki, p. 155.
27 Cressman et al., p. 155.
28 Statement of Lt. Cmdr. Yamauchi Masaki, navigator of Mogami in War
History Office files, letter to Walter Lord, January 22, 1966. Hereafter
“Yamauchi statement.”
29 Intriguingly, a similarly located explosion would doom Mikuma’
sistership, Suzuya, two years later at the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
30 Ugaki, p. 155.
31 Ultra Intercepts.
32 Ultra Intercepts–Zuih .
33 Cressman et al., p. 157.
34 Naval War College Analysis, p. 161.
35 Prange, p. 346; Zenji Orita, with Joseph Harrington, I-Boat Captain
(Canoga Park, CA: Major Books, 1976), p. 72.
36 Prange, p. 346.
37 Ibid.
38 Cressman et al., p. 157.
39 Prange, p. 347; Orita, p. 72.
40 Prange, p. 347; Cressman et al., p. 157.
41 Prange, p. 347.
42 Prange, p. 347; Orita, p. 73.
43 Prange, p. 347.
44 Lord, p. 275.
45 Prange, p. 348.
46 Orita, p. 74. Tanabe states explicitly that his boat was not then equipped
with the more modern Type 95 torpedo–a smaller, pure oxygen-driven
cousin of the Type 93 carried on board Japanese warships.
47 Prange, p. 350.
48 Cressman et al., pp. 157–58.
49 Ibid., p. 157.
50 Ibid., p. 159.
51 Orita, p. 74.
52 Prange, p. 351.
53 Orita, p. 75.
54 Prange, p. 351.
55 Ibid.
56 Prange, p. 351; Orita, p. 77.
57 Kawaguchi statement.
58 Yamauchi statement.
59 TROM of destroyer Arashio, courtesy Allyn Nevitt.
60 Yamauchi statement.
61 Saruwatari materials; Prange, p. 339.
62 Ugaki, p. 155.
63 Sawachi Hisae, Midowei Kaisen Kiroku tabular data. Senshi S sho, p.
503. It should be noted that we believe Sawachi’s casualty figures for
Mikuma to be authoritative. Likewise, we believe the figures given for
the number of her survivors, which were derived by Lacroix and Wells
 from Senshi S sho, are likewise sound. The result, though, is to revise
upward Mikuma’s likely complement from the 888 men nominally given
in Sawachi and other sources, to a total of 940 (240 survivors + 700
casualties). This is not surprising–wartime complements were often
somewhat larger than nominal peacetime manning. Mogamis crew was
known to be 932 at the time of the battle (842 survived + 90 casualties).
The same overmanning is likely to have been true of Japan’s carrier
crews during the battle.
64 Ugaki, p. 157.
65 Yamauchi statement.
66 Senshio S sh , p. 497; Lacroix and Wells, p. 488.
67 Bombing Squadron Six, Report of Photograph Mission, June 6, 1942.
68 Ibid.
69 In an ironic coincidence, the same day Mikuma was officially removed
from the Navy list–August 10, 1942–would also see the second go down,
heavy cruiser Kako, which was torpedoed and sunk shortly after the
Battle of Savo Island.
70 Bombing Squadron Six, Photographic Mission Report.
71 Sawachi Hisae, Midowei Kaisen Kiroku tabular data.
72 Fuchida, p. 197; Lacroix and Wells, p. 488.
73 Yamauchi statement.
74 CinCpac conf. let., File No A8/(37)/JAP/ (26.1), Serial 01753, of June
21, 1942. Hereafter “Interrogation of Mikuma survivors,” p. 1.
75 Naval War College Analysis, p. 177.
76 Ugaki, pp. 156–57.
77 Naval War College Analysis, p. 171.
78 Ugaki, p. 157.
79 Ugaki, pp. 154–55; Naval War College Analysis, p. 171.
80 Ugaki, p. 157.
81 Ibid. Refueling was complicated by the fact that the seas were rough.
The battleships of BatDiv 1 (Yamato, Nagato, and Mutsu) were evidently
not as proficient in this exercise as the ships of BatDiv 3, who had
presumably been doing more of this sort of thing during their frequent
consorting with Kid Butai.
82 Ugaki, p. 159.
83 Ibid, p. 157.
84 Ibid, p. 158.
85 Ibid.
86 In recent years there has been mistaken speculation that since Yorktown
 came to rest upright on the bottom, that she could not have capsized
before sinking. This line of reasoning, however, takes no account of the
hydrodynamic forces acting on a body falling through a liquid medium,
which tend to reassert the object’s original center of gravity. More
crucially, the photographic record of Yorktown’ demise is ironclad in this
respect.
87 Orange Intercepts: H sh .
88 Ugaki, p. 158. The ships in question were Asagumo, Natsugumo, and
Minegumo, with Chitose; Dull, p. 166.
89 Monograph No. 93, p. 85.
90 Ibid, p. 159.

CHAPTER 21: A BITTER HOMECOMING

1 Bergamini, p. 933.
2 Ibid., p. 449.
3 Bergamini, p. 935.
4 Ugaki, p. 163. We are grateful to Bob Hackett and Sander Kingsepp for
supplying additional details of the fleet’s return. Source: tabular records
of movement for BatDiv 1, JD-1 reels.
5 Ugaki, p. 163.
6 Lacroix and Wells, p. 393.
7 Senshi S sho, pp. 284–85.
8 Bergamini, p. 935.
9 Ugaki, p. 164; Fuchida, p. 12; Prange, p. 363.
10 Arimura letter.
11 Agawa, p. 322.
12 Lord, p. 286.
13 Prange, p. 362.
14 Ibid.; Lord, p. 286.
15 Bergamini, p. 935.
16 Maeda Takeshi account, “Aces of the Pacific” interviews. Hoover
Institution Archives, Bruning Collection.
17 Prange, p. 361.
18 Ibid.
19 Crane Materials, Orange Translation Intercepts, Record Group 38,
NARA.
20 The Navy was not alone engaging in such behavior; the Army and the
government as a whole behaved in similar fashion.
21 Willmott, Empires in the Balance, p. 82.
 22 NavTechJap S-84 (Report on Japanese Damage Control), p. 7.
23 Ibid., p. 8.
24 Ibid., p. 11.
25 Ibid., p. 12.
26 Peattie, p. 184; Communication from Osamu Tagaya to Parshall, August
25, 2004.
27 In particular, see Bergerud, pp. 320–31, and Peattie, pp. 183–86.
28 Peattie, p. 184.
29 Tokyo time.
30 Ugaki, p. 160.
31 Ibid., pp. 160–61.
32 Lundstrom, The First Team, pp. 92–93.
33 Senshi S sho, vol. 49, Nant h men Kaigun Sakusen, 1 Gato Dakkai
Sakusen Kaishimade. (Southeast Area Naval Operations, 1, To the
Beginning of Operations to Recapture Guadalcanal) as translated by
RADM Edwin T. Layton, USN (Ret.), and hereafter “Third Fleet Battle
Plan,” p. 545. U.S. doctrine evolved in similar directions.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid., p. 546.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid., p. 547.
39 We are grateful to David Dickson for his insights into this matter.

CHAPTER 22: WHY DID JAPAN LOSE?

1 Intriguingly, this is one of the first mentions of the notion of
“functionalizing” the ships within a single carrier task force along task-
specific lines–a trend that would shortly begin to manifest itself in
Japanese carrier doctrine in the form of Third Fleet’s battle plan.
2 Ugaki, pp. 160–62.
3 Ibid., pp. 138–39.
4 Ibid., p. 161.
5 Ibid., pp. 200, 203.
6 Ibid., pp. 201–2.
7 Ibid., pp. 205–9.
8 Ibid., p. 203.
9 Ugaki, p. 162.
10 Naval War College Analysis, p. 227.
11 Ibid., pp. 212–13.
12 Prange, p. 376.
13 Ibid, p. 382.
14 Ibid., p. 378.
15 Ibid., p. 381.
16 Ibid., p. 382.
17 Lord, p. 285.
18 Fuchida, pp. 210–11.
19 Goldstein and Dillon, p. 347.
20 John Prados, in Combined Fleet Decoded, p. 334, was one of the first
contemporary American scholars to cast doubt on this as a credible
explanation for Japan’s defeat.
21 This is an error the Japanese took pains to correct. At the Battle of the
Philippine Sea, for instance, the Japanese carrier force, which was similar
in size to the one they used at Midway, would employ nearly forty search
aircraft. Communication from David Dickson, August 25, 2004.
22 This failure has been commented on at length in the Naval War College
analysis of the battle, among others.
23 See in particular Eliot Cohen and John Gooch, Military Misfortunes: The
Anatomy of Failure in War (New York: Random House, 1990), pp. 5–28.
24 Evans and Peattie, p. 124.
25 Ibid., p. 129.
26 Ibid., p. 212. The Japanese were certainly not alone in their fixation on
the big gun as the result of this encounter–Jutland had a calcifying effect
on the doctrine of most of the major navies.
27 One might argue that given the Japanese expectation that the Americans
would not be in the area, this was less a doctrinal failure than a simple
misreading of the enemy. Conversely, the fact that we have shown that
Nagumo had more information in hand than has been previously believed
regarding the likelihood that “something was up” in the vicinity of
Midway, and yet the scouting arrangements remained inadequate, argues
that doctrine may have nevertheless been exerting a negative pressure on
the force’s scouting plan.
28 Barde, p. 292.
29 Cohen and Gooch, p. 121.
30 Evans and Peattie, p. 286.
31 Ibid., pp. 70–73.
32 Ibid., p. 150.
33 Ibid., pp. 238–39.
34 Ibid., p. 188.
 35 Ibid., pp. 282–86.
36 Willmott, Empires in the Balance, p. 242.
37 Ibid.

CHAPTER 23: ASSESSING THE BATTLE’S IMPORTANCE

1 “Aircrew” refers to any crew member on board a combat aircraft-pilot,
navigator, or radio operator/gunner. The Type 0 fighter carried a pilot,
the Type 99 bomber a pilot/bomb aimer and radio operator, and the Type
97 torpedo attack plane carried a pilot, observer/navigator/bomb aimer,
and a radio operator/gunner.
2 Richard Frank, Guadalcanal (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), p. 193.
These figures include floatplane, flying boat, and ground-based naval
aircrew as well as carrier aviators.
3 John Lundstrom, The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign: Naval
Fighter Combatfrom August to November 1942, (Annapolis, MD: Naval
Institute Press, 1994), p. 445.
4 Peattie, p. 134, estimates that there were approximately nine hundred
carrier pilots available to the IJN at the outbreak. Assuming a roughly
equal proportion of fighters, dive-bombers, and torpedo planes, this
would mean roughly another nine hundred or so carrier aircrew as well.
The Type 99 and Type 97 aircraft had crews of two and three men,
respectively. The total naval pilot corps, including land-based air groups
(of which there were many) numbered around 3,500 at the outbreak.
5 These costs were mitigated to a certain extent by the Japanese practice of
placing ships on reserve status at various times. We are grateful to
Osamu Tagaya for his comments on this matter.
6 The accounts of the rigors of training, as recounted by Sakai Saburo for
instance, make it clear that the prewar Japanese naval pilot program was
geared more toward finding excuses for washing candidates out than
toward establishing reasonable benchmarks for developing high-quality
pilots.
7 Bergerud, p. 668. These figures include carrier-based and ground-based
naval aircraft, and are composed of both combat and operational losses.
Losses over the following year–April 1943 to April 1944–sent the two-
year total to 7,820 aircraft.
8 Cost figures derived from Wright Patterson Air Force Base Museum,
http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/index.htm
9 John Ellis, World War II: A Statistical Survey (New York: Facts On File,
1993), p. 278.
 10 The uniformity of Togo’s battleships in terms of speed, gunnery, and
handling characteristics, had paid handsome dividends in terms of unit
cohesiveness and ability to maneuver more smartly than the opposing
Russian squadrons.
11 Willmott, Barrier and the javelin, p. 518.
12 David Dickson, noted expert on Japanese carriers and doctrine, has
driven this crucial point home in numerous conversations with the
authors over the years.
13 Willmott, Barrier and the javelin, p. 169.
14 Stephan, pp. 117–18, specifies that Japanese plans formulated in
September 1942 envisioned the use of the Second, Seventh, and Fifty-
Third divisions, along with an independent engineer regiment and a tank
regiment.
15 A battalion of Colonel Ichiki Kiyano’s detachment, which had been
slated to assault Midway, was destined to be annihilated by the Marine
defenders at Alligator Creek just two months later in a display of superior
American firepower.
16 Kennedy, pp. 428–29.
17 Mark Harrison, ed. The Economics of World War II: Six Great Powers
in International Comparison (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 1998), pp. 18–22.
18 Ibid., p. 11.
19 Willmott, Barrier and the javelin, p. 519.
20 The recent more detailed evaluations of the gargantuan contributions of
the Soviet Union during the war lend further credence to this general
stance.
21 Willmott, Barrier and the javelin, pp. 521–22.
22 U.S. Naval War College Analysis, p. 1.
23 Willmott, Barrier and the javelin, p. 519.

CHAPTER 24: THE MYTHS AND MYTHMAKERS OF MIDWAY

1 Lord, pp. ix–x.
2 We’re not the first to suggest this. John Prados’s Combined Fleet
Decoded, in a chapter entitled “Incredible Victories?” pp. 334–35,
sharply calls into question the same conventional American wisdoms that
we question here.
3 ATTG stands for Air Technical Intelligence Group, which comprised
several naval officers tasked with gathering information regarding
Japanese naval aviation via interviews with Japanese officers. Their
 interviews were sometimes conducted simultaneously with those of the
USSBS, but they tended to drill down into naval technical matters more
deeply than USSBS did.
4 Willmott, Pearl Harbor, pp. 143–57. Willmott’s assessment of this
famous incident presents compelling evidence that Fuchida “was
engaged in blatant and shameless self-advertisement in his deliberately
false representation of [the] episode” and even goes so far as to assert
that Fuchida’s version of events never took place.
5 Dull, p. 168.
6 However, it is also important to note that the Nagumo Report itself says
nothing to directly promote such an idea–Yoshioka Chuichi apparently
did his work honestly.
7 We are grateful to Osamu Tagaya for his insights into this matter.
8 Willmott, Empires in the Balance, p. 82.
9 Fuchida, p. 13.
10 Message from Hy d Nisohachi to Parshall, September 23, 2000, by
Koganemaru Takashi.

APPENDIX 2: JAPANESE ORDER OF BATTLE

1 Based on fragmentary records of Kaga’s manifest held in private
collection of James Sawruk. Alternately, it is possible that these two
aircraft were assigned to 6th Air Group for Midway.
2 Katsura Rihei, Kubo Zuih no Sogai, p. 60.

APPENDIX 3: THE CARRIERS OF KID BUTAI

1 Although it is outside the scope of this study, it is worth remarking that a
total of 11 floatplane crew members were also lost, bringing the total
known aviator death toll in the battle to 121.
2 In wartime Japanese, S ry was written phonetically as “SA-U-RI-YU-
U,” but pronounced as “S ry .” We are indebted to T. Katsuta for this
clarification.
3 Two of these B-17 shots are well-known in the Western literature. The
third, so far as we know, has only appeared in Japanese publications.
There are also two photographs of Hiry taken on the morning of 5 June
by a plane from the carrier H sh . These shots do not reveal any details
of her paint scheme, since much of Hiry s forward flight deck had been
destroyed by the initial American attack and subsequent hangar deck
explosions.
APPENDIX 4: THE AIRCRAFT OF KID BUTAI
1 Information for this section is taken from Peattie’s Sunburst, pp. 264–302.
This data, which the author helped tabulate for Peattie’s book, was
originally derived from Mikesh and Abe; Francillon, Japanese Aircraft of
the Pacific War; Hasegawa, Nihon no K k bokan; and Nozawa Tadashi,
ed., Nihon K k soshu [Encyclopedia of Japanese aircraft, 1900-1945]. 8
vols. Shuppan Ky d sha, 1958–1983.
2 The commonly used Allied code names for Japanese aircraft were
introduced after the Battle of Midway, but are included here (even if not
used in the text) for the sake of convenience.
3 At the time of the Battle of Midway, the D4Y was still experimental.
Once accepted into service, this aircraft was known both as the Navy
Type 2 Carrier Reconnaissance Plane, and the Navy Carrier Bomber
Suisei (Comet).

APPENDIX 5: JAPANESE AMPHIBIOUS OPERATIONS AGAINST MIDWAY–AN ANALYSIS

1 Samuel Morison was a notable exception to this trend, declaring in his
work that the Marines would likely have handed out a Tarawa-like defeat
on the Japanese had they attacked.
2 Throughout this section, we are greatly aided by the insights of Messrs.
William O’Neill, Eric Bergerud, Nathan Okun, Jim O’Neil, Byron Angel,
Alan Zimm, Brooks Rowlett, Terry Sofian, Bill Schliehauf, Edward
Rudnicki, Richard Worth, and Tim Lanzendorfer, all of whom
contributed to our understanding in the course of a lively online
discussion, April–May 2004.
3 Cressman et al., pp. 67–68.
4 Monograph No. 93, p. 14.
5 Morison, p. 86, tends toward the lower number. Marine histories tend
toward the higher figure.
6 Cressman et al., p. 43.
7 1,500 Navy and 1,000 Army troops. The remainder of the 5,000 troops
embarked were construction personnel, a survey detachment, and a
weather detachment.

APPENDIX 6: DISCOVERY OF CARRIER KAGA

1 For more details on the process used, see Parshall, Tully, and Dickson,
“Identifying Kaga,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, June 2001, pp.
48–52.
APPENDIX 7: JAPANESE AIRCRAFT TAIL CODES AT THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY
1 This letter, dated November 1, 1999, was forwarded to Parshall from Mr.
Allan Alsleben on March 1, 2001.
2 Osamu Tagaya, communication with authors, September 8, 2004.
3 Nagumo Report, p. 6. This may have been undertaken as a result of S ry
’s being used for other duties during the run-up to the battle. Recent data
concerning her movements during late May suggest that she may have
been directly involved in moving elements of the 23rd Air Flotilla to
Truk (Ultra Intercepts–Akagi), thereby putting her out of the loop during
the important preparatory period before the battle. Admiral Yamaguchi
would rightly have needed to shift his flag in order to be present at
Hashirajima during this critical phase.
4 Tagaya notes as well that if the tail codes were changed, that the
horizontal fuselage bands on the aircraft, which designated which ship
within the given carrier division the aircraft were from, would all have to
be changed as well.
5 We are grateful to Osamu Tagaya, James Sawruk, John Lundstrom, and
Michael Wenger for their insights on this matter.

APPENDIX 8: JAPANESE RADAR AT MIDWAY

1 Hiry action report, p. 30.
2 Prados, p. 277.
3 We appreciate Michael Wenger’s kindness in providing us with a copy of
this document.
4 “Battle Report of CV Hiry , No. 9, 26 March 1942–22 April 1942.”
WDC No. 160467, Group 25, Item 25A. A replacement copy of this
report has since been provided to the Naval Historical Center by the
authors.
5 These photographs were taken by a H sh scout plane on the morning of
5 June, while Hiry drifted, after ostensibly being scuttled the night
before. These photos, while somewhat indistinct, did not appear to have
been tampered with by Japanese censors and were clear enough to
determine that no bedspring antenna, or even remnants of one, was
anywhere on Hiry ’s superstructure.

APPENDIX 9: CHRONOLOGY OF JAPANESE FIGHTER OPERATIONS

1 We are grateful to Mark Horan for providing the information presented in
this appendix, which was originally translated by James Sawruk and Bob
Cressman from the original Japanese carrier action reports.
 2 Hata and Izawa, p. 410. We are grateful to Osamu Tagaya for his detailed
comments regarding pilot training courses.
3 Ranks are as follows: Lt. = Lieutenant (Ch -i), WO = warrant officer
([Hik ] Heis ch ), PO1c = Petty Officer, 1st class (Itt [Hik ] Heis ),
PO2c = Petty Officer, 2nd class (Nit [Hik ] Heis ), Sea1c = Flight
Seaman, 1st class (Itt Hik hei ), Ens. = Ensign (Sh -i).
4 The 6th Kokutai was being transported to Midway aboard the carriers of
Kid Butai. Akagi’s watch 4A is the only known incident where 6th
Kokutai aircraft participated in the battle. 6th Kokutai aircraft were
equipped with arresting gear, and some of the pilots were carrier-
qualified aviators.

APPENDIX 10: JAPANESE STRIKE ROSTERS, OPERATIONS MI AND AL

1 We are grateful to Mark Horan for providing the information presented in
this appendix, which was originally translated by James Sawruk and Bob
Cressman. It should be noted that not all information is complete, owing
to the difficulties in translation and/or missing data in the original source
documents, which are in handwritten Japanese. We are further grateful to
Osamu Tagaya for his fact-checking and insight into Japanese names.
2 We are grateful to James Sawruk for his work in translating and
tabulating these records.
3 Times and dates given in Midway local.

APPENDIX 11: ALEUTIANS FORCE DISTRIBUTIONS

1 Never implemented during the battle.
2 During the battle, Nenohi and Hatsuharu sailed with the Attu-Adak force.
Inazuma and Ikazuchi took their place in the Main Body.
3 Oboro did not sail with 2nd Mobile Force during the battle. She remained
in port, waiting to escort Zuikaku north to Ominato on June 15. Destroyer
Sazanami sailed with Kakuta’s force in her place.
4 During the operation, destroyers Nenohi and Hatsuharu sailed with the
Attu-Adak force, thereby bringing its total destroyers to four (Hatsuharu,
Hatsushimo, Nenohi, and Wakaba).
5 During the operation, destroyer Akatsuki was added to the screen of the
Kiska Invasion Force. Nor did Ikazuchi and Inazumo sail with this force.
Thus, in the event, the total number of destroyers with the Kiska Force
was three (Akatsuki, Hibiki, and Hokaze).
6 Actually sailed with the Main Body.
7 Mistakenly listed as an AP in the original.
8 This is clearly a mistake on the part of the original author, as Myoko and
Haguro had nothing to do with the submarine force. Both cruisers were
under repair in Japan at the time of the operational planning.
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Hanson, Victor Davis. Carnage and Culture: landmark Battles in the Rise
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Hata, Ikuhiko, and Yasuho Izawa. Japanese Naval Aces and Fighter Units
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Healy, Mark, and David Chandler, eds. Campaign Series, Midway 1942:
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Japanese Warships, No. 3, Aircraft Carriers Hosho, Ry j , Akagi, Kaga,
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Marder, Arthur. Old Friends, New Enemies, The Royal Navy and the
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Orita, Zenji, with Joseph Harrington. I-Boat Captain. Canoga Park, CA:
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Major Books, California, 1976.

Articles
Dickson, David. “Fighting Flat-tops: The Sh kakus.” Warship
International 1 (1977).
Hunnicutt, Thomas G. “The Operational Failure of U.S. Submarines at the
Battle of Midway-and Implications for Today.” Newport, RI: Naval
War College Joint Military Operations Department, May 1996.
Isom, Dallas W “The Battle of Midway: Why the Japanese Lost.” Naval
War College Review (Summer 2000).
––. “They Would Have Found a Way.” Naval War College Review
(Summer 2001).
Itani, Jiro, Hans Lengerer, and Tomoko Rehm-Takara. “Anti-aircraft
Gunnery in the Imperial Japanese Navy.” In Warship, 1991, edited by
Robert Gardiner. London: Conway Maritime Press Ltd., 1991.
Lengerer, Hans. “Akagi and Kaga.” Parts 1-3. Warship: A Quarterly
Journal of Warship History 22 (April 1982); 23 (July 1982); 24
(October 1982).
Parshall, Jonathan, David Dickson, and Anthony Tully. “Doctrine Matters:
Why the Japanese Lost at Midway.” Naval War College Review 54,
No. 3 (Summer 2001).
Parshall, Jonathan, with Anthony Tully and David Dickson. “Identifying
Kaga.” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings (June 2001).
Parshall, Jonathan. “What Was Really Happening on the Japanese Flight
Decks?” World War II (Midway Issue, June 2002).
Schlesinger, James. “Underappreciated Victory.” Naval History (October
2003).
Snow, Carl. “Japanese Carrier Operations: How Did They Do It ?” The
Hook (Spring 1995).

Official Documents
Acting CO VT-6 (Lt. [jg] R. E. Laub), “Report of Action 4 June 1942.”
U.S. Department of the Navy, Bureau of Aeronautics, Air Technical
Intelligence Group, Advanced Echelon, Far East Air Forces, APO 925,
26 November 1945, Reports 1, 2, and 5.
Bureau of Ships, War Damage Report No. 56, USS Franklin (CV 13),
September 15, 1946. Naval History Center, Washington, DC.
Bureau of Ships, War Damage Report No. 62, USS Princeton (CVL 23),
October 30 1947. Naval History Center, Washington, DC.
CINCPAC to COMINCH, “Battle of Midway” (June 28, 1942).
CINCPAC to CNO(DNI), “Interrogation of Japanese Prisoners Taken after
Midway Action 9 June 1942.” Ser 01753 (June 21, 1942).
CINCPAC conf. let., File No A8/(37)/JAP/(26.r), Serial 01753, of June 21,
1942, interrogation of Mikuma survivors.
CO VB-3 (LCDR M. F. Leslie) to CYAG, “Attack Conducted 4 June 1942
on Japanese Carriers located 156 miles NW Midway Island, Narrative
Concerning” (June 7, 1942).
CO VB-5 (Temporarily Designated VS-5) to CO USS Enterprise, “Report
of Action June 4-6, 1942” (June 7, 1942).
CO VB-5, “Aircraft Action Report, 2000 5 June 1942.”
CO VB-5, “Aircraft Action Report 1445 6 June 1942.”
CO VB-6 to CO USS Enterprise, “Report of Action June 4-6, 1942” (June
20, 1942).
CO VB-8 to CO USS Hornet, “Action Report 5-6 June 1942” (June 7,
1942).
CO VS-6, “Aircraft Action Report, 1205 4 June 1942.”
CO VS-6, “Aircraft Action Report, 1905 4 June 1942.”
CO VS-6, “Aircraft Action Report, 1915 5 June 1942.”
FTP-170-B Damage Control Instructions 1944. United States Government
Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1944.
“Interview of Rear Admiral G. D. Murray, USN from the South Pacific,” in
the Bureau of Aeronautics, November 25, 1942. CINCPAC Box
#101(1-40), Record Set 4797, File A4-31.
“Japanese Aerial Tactics,” Special Translation Number 57, CINCPAC-
CINCPOA Bulletin No. 87-45, April 3, 1945.
Japanese Monograph No. 88. “Aleutian Naval Operations, March 1942-
February 1943.” Department of the Army, 1947.
Japanese Monograph No. 93. “Midway Operations May-June 1942.”
Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1947.
Kaigun Seido Enkaku (Naval Organization History), 1941. Contains
nominal crew structures of carriers Akagi, Kaga, S ry , and Hiry .
Lt. Arthur J. Brassfield to CO VF-3. “Report of Action 4 June 1942” (June
6, 1942); Wilhelm G. Esders, CAP, to CYAG, “Report of Action 4
June 1942” (June 6, 1942).
Lt. Sam Adams, “Aircraft Action Report, 1615 4 June 1942.”
Nairei Teiyo (Manual of Military Secret Orders). Translation of Captured
Japanese Document, Item #613 (S-1193), July 20, 1943. Defines
aircraft squadron compositions for various periods. National Archives,
Washington, DC.
Record Group 457, SRMN-012, Fleet Intelligence Summary, from May 27,
1942, to June 8, 1942. National Archives, Washington, DC.
“The Midway Operation: DesRon 10, Mine Sweep Div 16, CV Akagi, CV
Kaga, CVL S ry , and CVL Hiry .” Extract Translation from DOC
No. 160985B-MC 397.901. (Contains translated carrier air group
reports for Akagi,, Kaga, S ry , and Hiry .).
Ultra Intercepts-Designated as “Orange Translations of Japanese
Intelligence Intercepts.” Intercept entries carded for Akagi, Kaga,
Hosho, etc. Crane Materials, National Archives II-Record Group 38.
USF-77 (Revised). “Current Tactical Orders Aircraft Carriers U.S. Fleet.”
Prepared by Commander Aircraft Battle Force, March 1941. Rec. No.
4756.
USF-75. “Current Tactical Orders and Doctrine U.S. Fleet Aircraft, Volume
Two, Battleship and Cruiser Aircraft.”
USF-74. “U.S. Dive-bomber Doctrine.”
U.S. Naval Technical Mission to Japan reports, including:
“Aircraft Arrangements and Handling Facilities in Japanese Naval
Vessels.”
Report A-11. Washington, DC; Operational Archives, U.S. Naval
History Division, 1974.
“Characteristics of Japanese Naval Vessels-Article 2-Surface
Machinery Design.” S-01-2, Washington, DC; Operational Archives, U.S.
Naval History Division, 1974.
“Characteristics of Japanese Naval Vessels-Article 3-Surface Warship
Hull Design.” S-01-3, Washington, DC; Operational Archives, U.S. Naval
History Division, 1974.
“Characteristics of Japanese Naval Vessels-Article 4-Surface Warship
Machinery Design (Plans and Documents).” S-01-4, Washington, DC;
Operational Archives, U.S. Naval History Division, 1974.
“Effectiveness of Japanese AA Fire.” Report C-44. Washington, DC;
Operational Archives, U.S. Naval History Division, 1974.
 “Japanese Anti-aircraft Fire-Control.” Report 0-30. Washington, DC;
Operational Archives, U.S. Naval History Division, 1974.
“Japanese Damage Control.” Report S-84(N). Washington, DC;
Operational Archives, U.S. Naval History Division, 1974.
“Japanese Radio, Radar, and Sonar Equipment.” Report E-17.
Washington, DC; Operational Archives, U.S. Naval History Division, 1974.
“Japanese Submarine and Shipborne Radar.” Report E-01. Washington,
DC; Operational Archives, U.S. Naval History Division, 1974.
“Japanese Torpedoes and Tubes-Articles I, Ship and Kaiten
Torpedoes.” Report O-01-1. Washington, DC; Operational Archives, U.S.
Naval History Division, 1974.
“Japanese Torpedoes and Tubes-Articles 2, Aircraft Torpedoes.” Report
O-01-2. Washington, DC; Operational Archives, U.S. Naval History
Division, 1974.
U.S. Naval War College. “Battle of Midway, Including the Aleutian Phase
of June 3 to June 14, 1942. Strategical and Tactical Analysis.”
Newport, Connecticut, 1948.
United States Navy Combat Narrative. “The Aleutians Campaign, June
1942-August 1943.” Naval Historical Center Department of the Navy,
Washington, DC, 1993.
United States Navy, Office of Naval Intelligence. The Japanese Story of the
Battle of Midway. Washington, DC.: GPO, 1947. (Translation of parts
of First Air Fleet, Detailed Battle Report No. 6, Midway Operations,
27 May-9 June 1942, in the ONI Review May 1947).
United States Strategic Bombing Survey (Pacific), Naval Analysis Division.
Interrogations of Japanese Officials, Volume 1 and 2, 1946.
War Patrol Report, USS Nautilus.
War Patrol Report, USS Grouper.
War Diary of 6th Fleet, Midway Operation, WDC 160268.
Japanese Microfilm Records-JD 1(a). Operational orders and records for the
Battle of Midway June 1942. CVs Akagi, Kaga, S ry , Hiry ; Desron
10; detailed action report (DAR) CV Kaga 5 June; DAR CV S ry , 27
May-9 June (sic); DAR CV Hiry , 27 May-6 June; DAR First Air
Fleet, 27 May-9 June. Referred to in the text as “JD-1.”
Second Fleet Ultra Secret Standing Order No. 16, May 1, 1944, “Diversion
Attack Force Doctrine.”

Private Papers
 Excerpts from working notes of Walter Lord, received by Parshall and
Tully, 2001.
Memo from Lt. Louis Poisson Davis to Commander Destroyer Squadron
Eleven, May 2, 1923. Louis Poisson Davis Papers, Collection No. 309,
East Carolina Manuscript Collection, J. Y. Joyner Library, East
Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina.
Mobile Force Doctrine. Collection of unpublished manuscripts regarding
Japanese naval doctrine held in personal collection of David Dickson.
Plans of Kaga and S ry . Myco International, Japan.
Plans of Akagi, courtesy of Chuck Haberlein, U.S. Naval Historical Center.
Plans of Japanese carriers provided from private collection of David
Dickson.
“Significant PBY sightings of Japanese Carriers late 4 June-5 June [1942],”
compiled by John Lundstrom, sent to Tony Tully, March 15, 2000.
Tabulated American aircraft attack rosters and casualty figures, including
cause of loss. Courtesy Mark Horan.
Translated carrier air group action reports, including flight rosters and
mission times, of Akagi, Kaga, S ry , Hiry , Ry j , and Juny .
Courtesy James Sawruk.
Bruning Collection, Hoover Institute. Contains interviews of IJN aviators.
Courtesy John Bruning.

Private Correspondence
Letters to Jonathan Parshall from Hyodo Nisohachi regarding Japanese
naval aviation equipment, procedures, and technique; translated by
Koganemaru Takashi; transmitted to Parshall, 2000-2002.
Letters to Jonathan Parshall from Capt. Yoshida Akihiko, JMSDF (Ret.)
2000-2004.
Phone interview with Arimura Yoshikazu conducted by Yoshida Jiro,
transmitted to Jonathan Parshall, March 20, 2002.
E-mails from Daniel Rush, U.S. Navy (Ret.), to Jonathan Parshall,
regarding reminiscences of Dr. Nagumo Shinji, June 3, 2001.

Magazines
Senzen Senpaku (Japanese Ships before the War). Private ship magazine
published by Endo Akira and courtesy of same to Jonathan Parshall.
Plans consulted and translated by Yoshida Akihiko include S ry ,
Hiry , Akagi, and Kaga.
Index

20-mm Oerlikon antiaircraft gun, 144
22nd Picket Boat Squadron, 46
2nd Combined SNLF, 48
40-mm Bofors antiaircraft gun, 144
431st Bombardment Squadron, 106. See also Aircraft, U.S.
4th Kokutai, 31
6th Air Group. See 6th Kokutai
6th Kokutai, 90, 91
Used in CAP, 149
6th Ku. See 6th Kokutai

ABDA Command, 19
Abe, Capt. Toshio, 351
Abe, RADM Hiroaki, 18, 311, 320
1047 communication to Yamamoto, 261–262
Orders Yamaguchi to attack enemy carriers, 262
Temporarily assumes command of Kido Butai, 261
Adak Island, 45, 46, 460, 533, 580
Adams, Lt. Sam, 308, 446, 566, 587
Death of, 365
Sights Kido Butai, 4 June, 308
Ady, Lt. Howard P., 213, 446, 548
Sights Kido Butai, 4 June, 134
Aerial weapons. See Type 80, Type 98, Type 99 bombs; Type 91 and Mk. 13
torpedo
Equipment for moving. See Aircraft carriers, Japanese
Mounting hardware. See Tokaki
“AF” (Midway). See Intelligence, U.S.; Code breaking
Aichi aircraft company, 89
Aichi D3A carrier bomber. See Aircraft, Japanese
Aimune, Cdr. Kunize, 253, 327, 339, 357, 359, 446, 560
 Behavior in lifeboat, 359
Escapes from Hiry , 357
Escapes from Hiry ’s engine rooms, 357
Aircraft, British
Blenheim medium bomber, 145
Aircraft, Japanese
E11A1 night reconnaissance seaplane, 108, 332. See also Nagara (light
cruiser)
Experimental model 13 carrier bomber, 80, 89, 180, 184, 189, 483–484.
See also S ry (aircraft carrier)
Tail codes, 125, 494–496
Tenzan carrier attack aircraft, 89, 583
Type 0 carrier fighter, 65, 66, 78, 80, 82, 103, 112, 119, 128, 136, 156,
159, 182, 183, 184, 196, 200, 214, 215, 224, 229, 231, 239, 243, 255, 292,
293, 315, 407, 446, 447, 448, 449, 480, 543, 548, 549, 555, 556, 557, 583
Characteristics of, 78, 479–480
Climbing ability, 227
Type 0 reconnaissance seaplane, 107, 108, 484–485
Type 2 flying boat, 50
Type 95 reconnaissance seaplane, 107, 108, 184, 319, 485–486
Type 96 carrier fighter, 372
Type 97 carrier attack aircraft, 46, 48, 80, 89, 112, 120, 126, 128, 129,
130, 131, 157, 159, 175, 196, 197, 200, 205, 251, 290, 329, 349, 398, 448,
466, 478, 479, 480, 482, 483, 508, 537, 539, 541, 543, 545, 550, 568, 571,
577, 583
Characteristics of, 80, 128, 290, 480–481
Type 97 flying boat, 46
Type 99 carrier bomber, 46, 73, 78, 80, 89, 91, 120, 126, 127, 181, 262,
263, 295, 350, 478, 479, 482, 524, 537, 538, 555, 561, 571, 577, 583
Characteristics of, 80, 120, 482–483
Aircraft, U.S.
B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber, 96, 106, 178, 183, 215, 329, 363,
364
Ineffectiveness in attacking warships, 180, 329
B-25 Mitchell medium bomber, 42
B-26 Marauder medium bomber, 96, 151–153, 163, 176
F2A Buffalo carrier fighter, 96, 135
F4F Wildcat carrier fighter, 65, 94, 96, 135, 207, 293, 314, 315, 368,
369, 544
 F6F Hellcat carrier fighter, 423
PBY Catalina patrol aircraft, 33, 96, 106, 134, 148, 174, 200, 213, 272,
349, 359, 362, 363, 446, 502, 508, 545, 548, 549, 573, 588
Equipped as torpedo aircraft, 114
Robustness of, 151, 156
SB2U Vindicator scout bomber, 96, 185, 509
SBD Dauntless dive-bomber, 65, 80, 94, 96, 110, 176, 274, 308, 328,
362, 363, 364, 365, 445, 446, 505, 509, 542, 545, 549, 560
TBD Devastator torpedo bomber, 65, 94, 135, 207, 214, 215, 314, 445,
448, 544, 560
TBF Avenger torpedo bomber, 96, 151, 176, 541
Aircraft carriers, British, 246–247
Aircraft carriers, Japanese
Aircraft engine warmup procedure, 123–124
Aircraft stowage, 119, 197, 199
Arming aircraft, 119–120, 130–131, 210
Armor protection, 245
Arresting wires, 194
Bomb lifts, 123, 245, 250
Changes in design after Midway, 389
Cramped deck heights, 280
Crash barriers, 196
Difficulties with radio communications, 99
Elevators, 121
Fire hazards on board, 244
Flight decks occupied with CAP operations, 4 June, 165, 180
Flight deck illumination, 125
Flight deck markings, 182, 192, 477
Fueling aircraft, 119
Fueling system, 244–245
Hangar design, 123, 246–248
Importance of, 26, 418–419
Landing accidents aboard, 194–196
Landing aircraft, 190–197
Landing light arrays, 194, 493
Launching aircraft, 117–129
Ordnance carts, 120, 157
Ordnance stowage, 245
Pumps, 246, 249
 Rearming aircraft, 156–159, 205
Sloppy ordnance stowage, 157
Time required, 158
Relative wind required for launch, 128
Scale economies in larger designs, 418–419
Spotting aircraft, 121, 170, 230
Structural weaknesses of aviation gasoline storage, 245
Usage of deck parks, 196
Ventilation, 119
Aircraft carriers, U.S.
Command facilities, 162
Hangar design, 247
Aircraft production, 89, 91, 420
Air Defense, 136–146. See also Antiaircraft weapons
At Indian Ocean, 145, 498
Japanese preference for maneuver over firepower, 145
Japanese usage of helm, 143, 206, 221, 241
Ring formation, 138, 295
U.S. practices, 144
Weaknesses in Japanese, 226
Air Officer (hik ch ), 7
Air organization
Buntaich , 82
Ch tai, 80–82
Hik kitai, 82
Hik taich , 82
K k Sentai, 82
Sh tai, 80
Sh taich , 80
Air Technical Intelligence Group (ATIG), 436
Akagi (aircraft carrier), 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 18, 42, 62, 71, 82, 88,
90, 92, 99, 100, 101, 102, 104, 106, 107, 112, 113, 114, 120, 121, 123, 124, 126,
127, 128, 129, 130, 133, 138, 140, 143, 145, 146, 149, 150, 151, 152, 156, 157,
158, 159, 161, 162, 163, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 171, 173, 176, 178, 180, 181,
183, 184, 185, 186, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 197, 199, 200, 202, 204, 205,
206, 207, 210, 211, 213, 214, 219, 221, 223, 228, 229, 230, 231, 235, 236, 239,
240, 241, 242, 248, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 264, 265,
266, 267, 268, 276, 278, 279, 280, 281, 284, 286, 287, 288, 299, 300, 309, 316,
318, 324, 332, 333, 334, 337, 339, 340, 341, 342, 344, 352, 353, 354, 363, 386,
387, 388, 398, 407, 417, 418, 419, 422, 424, 437, 446, 447, 448, 449, 450, 462,
463, 464, 466, 467, 470, 476, 477, 478, 493, 494, 498, 499, 500, 501, 506, 508,
509, 510, 511, 512, 513, 514, 522, 523, 524, 535, 540, 541, 542, 544, 546, 549,
550, 552, 553, 554, 555, 556, 557, 558, 559, 560, 561, 562, 565, 569, 570, 571,
580, 583, 584, 585, 587, 588, 589
Aircraft losses during attack on Midway, morning 4 June, 204
Antiaircraft weapons, 138, 239
Attacked by dive-bombers, 1026 4 June, 239, 424
Attempts to flood magazines, morning 4 June, 254, 287
Bridge abandoned, 259–261
Casualties, 353, 476
Casualties among engineering staff, 281
Characteristics of, 6, 462–466
Command facilities of, 162
Cost of, 7, 419
Damage control aboard, 4 June, 276–278, 280–281, 299–300, 309, 310
Damage to, 253, 276, 310, 333
Damage to rudder, 256–258
Engineering spaces abandoned, 258, 286
Loses power at 1350, 4 June, 309
Medical staff on board, 276
Number of hits against, 241
Ordered abandoned, 333
Radio facilities of, 99–100
Refits to, 7
Resumes engine power at 1203, 4 June, 286
Scuttled, 5 June, 353
Akebono (destroyer), 67, 114, 456, 460, 532, 533
Akigumo (destroyer), 78, 106, 452, 532, 541
Akiyama, Ens., 286, 287, 409, 446, 525
Akiyama Saneyuki, 409
Aleutians Base Air Force, 46
Aleutians Force Main Body, 54
Aleutians Screening Force, 46, 54
Aleutian Islands, 19, 37, 44, 46, 387, 399, 461, 537, 581, 586, 588
Strategic value of, 44–5
Allen, Lt. Col. Brooke E., 363
Alligator Creek, 489
Alternative history, 424–425
Amagai, Cdr. Takahisa, 8, 156, 234, 235, 236, 255, 256, 278, 281, 300, 320,
334, 338, 339, 446, 450, 497, 498, 546, 552, 555, 556, 560, 568
Assumes command of Kaga, 256, 300
Orders Kaga abandoned, 320
Reliability as a witness, 498, 556
Amagi (battle cruiser), 6, 8
Amari, PO1c Hiroshi, 132, 148, 159, 161, 164, 184, 189, 198, 210, 264, 306,
311, 319, 398, 446, 523. See also Scouting aircraft, Tone No. 4
Amphibious operations, 67, 427
Against Aleutians, 45, 355, 383. See also Operation AL
Against Hawaii, 43
Against Midway, 48–49, 56, 65, 69, 97, 203, 363, 398, 425–426, 487–
490. See also Operation MI
Anderson (destroyer), 94
And , General Kisabur , 385
Annual operational plan (nendo sakusen keikaku), 411
Antiaircraft weapons, 138–143, 144, 234, 237, 239, 242–243, 257, 324, 362,
365, 366, 368, 369, 371
Concentraton in Japanese carriers, 144, 393
Effectiveness at Midway, 145, 178, 180
Engagement ranges, 141, 142
Superior lethality of U.S., 202
U.S., 295, 314
Aoki, Capt. Taijir , 7, 149, 152, 162, 185, 221, 241, 254, 256, 257, 258, 259,
276, 281, 286, 287, 300, 333, 334, 340, 341, 446, 450, 497, 541, 546, 552, 555,
558, 569. See alsoAkagi (aircraft carrier)
Attempts to die aboard Akagi, 340–341
Forcibly rescued from Akagi, 341
Orders Akagi abandoned at 1920, 4 June, 333
Orders emperor’s portrait transferred to Nowaki, 300
Orders engineering spaces abandoned, 258
Requests scuttling of Akagi, 334
Urges Nagumo to abandon Akagi, 259
Arashio (destroyer), 345, 366, 376, 377, 378, 456, 573, 574, 575
Attacked by Hornet air group, afternoon 6 June, 377
Arashi (destroyer), 18, 192, 199, 210, 217, 223, 267, 276, 288, 332, 333, 340,
341, 353, 388, 452, 532, 533, 563, 569
Ariga, Capt. Kosaku, 333, 334, 335, 340, 341, 352, 353, 446, 452, 569
Inquires as to status of damaged carriers, 333–334
Arima, Cdr. Takayasu, 97, 446, 457
Arimura, WO Yoshikazu, 327, 328, 350, 386, 446, 496, 549, 567, 571, 576, 589
Quarantined after battle, 386
Asahikawa, 67
Asashio (destroyer), 345, 366, 376, 377, 381, 456
Attacked by Hornet air group, afternoon 6 June, 377
Astoria (heavy cruiser), 94, 299, 330, 564
Atago (heavy cruiser), 16, 49, 455
Atlanta (light cruiser), 94, 491
Attu Island, 45, 46, 47, 52, 65, 355, 460, 533, 580
Invaded, 383
Australia, 10, 19, 22, 27, 29, 36, 39, 40, 58, 61, 422, 424, 426, 427, 428
Communications lines to, 22, 27, 32, 40, 61
Japanese invasion plans for, 27, 427
Threats to, 19
Aviators
Decline in Japanese effectiveness, 390–391
Loss of veteran Japanese cadres, 391–392
Training of, 390, 499
Weaknesses in Japanese training programs, 390, 420
Aylwin (destroyer), 94

Balch (destroyer), 94, 299, 315

Ballard, Dr. Robert, 491
Ballard (seaplane tender), 359, 383, 491, 563, 568, 569, 581
Band , PO3c Makoto, 290, 502, 503, 506, 521
Barrage fire, 140
Bataan Peninsula, 19, 405, 489
Battleships, Japanese, 5
Attitudes toward among carriers, 5, 54
Battleship Division 1, 49
Battleship Division 11, 392
Battleship Division 2, 46, 55
Battleship Division 3, 5, 47, 48, 49, 100, 192, 223, 265, 267, 268, 288, 308, 324,
342, 354, 372, 386
Benham (destroyer), 94, 299
Best, Lt. Richard “Dick” Halsey, 216, 228, 231, 258, 288
Attacks Akagi, 239
 Attacks Hiry , 326
Reputation of, 242
Bismarck (battleship), 491
Blakey, Major George A., 329, 446
Bombing Eight. See VB-8
Bombing Six. See VB-6
Bombing Three. See VB-3
Bombs. See Type 80, Type 98, Type 99 bombs
Bomb storage. See Aircraft carriers, Japanese
Brassfield, Lt. Arthur J., 293, 587
Britain
Defeat in Pacific, 19–21, 30, 39–40
Brockman, Lt. Cdr. William, 184, 185, 199, 210, 279, 302, 303, 446. See also
Nautilus (submarine)
Attacks Nagara, 199
Brown, VADM Wilson, 31, 466, 552, 581
Browning, Cdr. Miles R., 173, 363, 364, 446, 566
Buckmaster, Capt. Elliot, 318, 361, 373, 374, 375, 407, 446. See also Yorktown
(aircraft carrier)
Attempts to salvage Yorktown, 361
Orders Yorktown abandoned, 318
Bungo Suid , 18, 386
Buntaich . See Formations, Air
Burma, 19, 22, 30, 39, 412

Canberra (heavy cruiser), 491

Cannon ammunition (20-mm), 156, 214
CAP. See Combat air patrol
Carriers. See Aircraft carriers
Carrier Division 1, 6, 48, 64, 89, 112, 157, 159, 166, 167, 171, 181, 204, 209,
219, 221, 263, 417, 420, 437, 494
Carrier Division 2, 7, 48, 64, 77, 89, 112, 119, 157, 158, 167, 168, 176, 192,
199, 200, 204, 205, 209, 210, 219, 221, 228, 252, 267, 270, 308, 417, 420, 494,
495
Carrier Division 4, 46, 47, 284
Renamed CarDiv 2 after Midway, 391
Carrier Division 5, 10, 48, 58, 59, 61, 63, 64, 133, 165, 406, 412, 420, 435
Junior status of, 10, 58, 64, 89, 178, 417
 Renamed CarDiv 1 after Midway, 391
Carrier Group (of Main Body), 49
Catalina (PBY). See Aircraft, U.S.
Cats, author’s, 613. See also Hiry and S ry
Ceylon, 11, 22, 30, 42, 131, 145
Chakkan shid t . See Aircraft carriers, Japanese Chase, Lt. William A.
Sights Kido Butai, 134, 213
Cheek, Mach. Thomas F., 224
Chihaya, Masatake, 16, 69, 72, 400, 450, 514, 585
Chikuma (heavy cruiser), 12, 18, 100, 107, 108, 132, 144, 146, 147, 148, 152,
164, 175, 192, 198, 199, 205, 210, 221, 226, 261, 264, 265, 266, 283, 285, 289,
290, 292, 306, 308, 311, 319, 324, 329, 335, 339, 340, 341, 342, 354, 355, 361,
366, 392, 401, 402, 432, 447, 451, 479, 485, 486, 523, 532, 554, 555, 561, 562,
566, 573
Sends cutter to assist S ry , 264, 321
Chikuma No. 1. See Scouting aircraft, Japanese
Chikuma No. 5. See Scouting aircraft, Japanese
Chikuma No. 6. See Scouting aircraft, Japanese
China, 16, 17, 22, 25, 74, 76, 77, 78, 82, 125, 137, 207, 281, 387, 496, 499, 540
China War, 74, 76
CHiy da (seaplane tender), 49, 453
Ch kai (heavy cruiser), 49, 455
Ch tai. See Formations, Air
Circle Plans, 411
Clausewitz, Karl von, 412
Close Support Group, 49
CO2. See Damage control
Codes
JN 25, 60, 67
Code breaking, 60, 92, 397, 399
Confirms Midway as objective of Operation MI, 93
Colombo, 11, 113, 131
Colonialism, Japanese, 73
Colonialism, Western, 72, 74
Combat air patrol, 55, 128, 129, 130, 131, 133, 134, 136, 137, 138, 143, 144,
145, 146, 149, 151, 152, 156, 159, 163, 165, 167, 168, 169, 173, 176, 180, 181,
182, 184, 185, 186, 188, 189, 199, 206, 207, 209, 210, 211, 213, 214, 215, 216,
221, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 230, 231, 232, 236, 241, 243, 269, 274, 275,
283, 293, 298, 299, 308, 312, 319, 323, 324, 326, 366, 407, 432, 441, 444, 500,
501, 502, 503, 504, 505, 508, 509, 510, 511, 512, 524, 542, 549, 552, 554, 558,
564, 566, 568, 587
American, 293, 312
Fighter direction, 136
Impedes offensive strike operations on flight deck, 165, 216, 230
Japanese tendency to concentrate on torpedo aircraft, 227
Joined by Kaga dive-bombers, 181
Joined by returning morning strike fighters, 181
Lack of central coordination, 186, 215
Last Japanese fighters ditch, 339
Lateral vs. vertical distortion, 227
“Organic” behavior of, 215
Stacking, 129, 324
Tendency to overreact, 215
Weaknesses in Japanese, 137, 215–216, 219
Combat information center (CIC), 136, 188, 423
Combined Fleet
Hijacking of strategic planning process, 24
Lack of command changes after Midway disaster, 388–389
Communications
Between ships and aircraft, 136, 146
Between U.S. aircraft formations, 209
Conditions of radio silence, 104, 129, 392, 397, 398
Japanese communications plan for Operation MI, 100
Japanese usage of single radio frequency, 136, 188
Conyngham (destroyer), 94
Coral Sea, Battle of, 10, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 89, 92, 93, 94, 95, 102,
145, 165, 170, 209, 268, 320, 401, 405, 406, 407, 409, 412, 417, 418, 421, 430,
449, 538, 539, 542, 543, 546, 584
Implications for Operation MI, 64–65
Losses at, 63
Origins of, 37, 57
Cornwall (heavy cruiser), 11, 131, 132
Coverup of Midway disaster, 385, 386–388
Japanese claims of victory, 387
Official policy on loss figures, 387–388
Cressman, Robert, 543, 544, 548, 551, 553, 554, 555, 556, 564, 566, 567, 568,
569, 570, 572, 573, 574, 579, 580, 582
Cruiser Division 4, 343
Cruiser Division 5, 343
Cruiser Division 7, 49, 56, 342, 344, 359, 367, 372, 392, 488
Collisions among, 345–347
Ordered to abort Midway bombardment, 344
Ordered to bombard Midway, 342
Cruiser Division 8, 12, 210, 261, 265, 267, 268, 288, 289, 308, 319, 324, 340,
341, 342, 372, 386, 392
Cryptanalysis. See Codes;
Code breaking
CV-5. See Yorktown (aircraft carrier)
CV-6. See Enterprise (aircraft carrier)
CV-8. See Hornet (aircraft carrier)

Dai-ni Kid Butai, 46, 54, 91. See also Second Mobile Striking Force Daihatsu
(landing barge), 48, 488
Damage control, 244, 249, 254, 298–299, 310, 312
CO2 systems, 245, 246, 250, 254, 297, 407, 559
Emergency generators, 249
Emergency steering, 257–259
Firefighting, 245–246, 254, 278
Alongside, 341
Fireproof screens, 246, 250, 254
Foam systems, 246, 278
Lessons learned from Midway, 389–390
Specialist role in Japanese Navy, 256, 277
Superiority of U.S. practice, 277, 407
Weaknesses in Japanese practice, 277–278
Dauntless. See Aircraft, U.S.
“Deckload spotting.” See Doctrine, carrier
Defeat at Midway
Impact of, 416–430
As “Decisive Battle”, 423–424, 428, 428–430
Effects on Solomons campaign, 422, 426
Length of Pacific War, 428
Loss of ability to mass carrier forces, 421–422
Loss of aircraft, 420
Loss of aircraft mechanics, 417
 Loss of CarDiv 1 and 2, 416
Loss of carrier aviators, 416–417, 419–420
Loss of fleet carriers, 417–420
Loss of organizational know-how, 417
Loss of tactical homogeneity in Japanese carrier force, 420
On defense of Hawaii, 425–426
Reasons for, 399
Breaking radio silence on 2 June, 397
Complexity of operational plan, 398, 402
Concentration of carrier forces, 398
Dispersion of Japanese forces, 398, 399, 400, 408–409
Failure to adapt, 410
Failure to anticipate, 408–410
Failure to learn, 403–408
Failure of Operation K, 398
Failure to use 2-phase searches, 398
Focusing on capturing Midway rather than defeating American fleet,
399
Inability to understand importance of numerical superiority, 405–406
Lack of strategic intelligence of American actions, 398
Late launch of Tone No. 4, 398, 400
Nagumo’s decision to rearm aircraft for second attack against Midway,
400
Not having counterattacked immediately, 400
Overconfidence. See also “Victory Disease”
Overemphasis on operational mass vs. speed, 406
Planning around enemy intentions, rather than capabilities, 399, 402,
408
Rigidity of Japanese operational plans, 400, 410–412, 412
Technological backwardness of Imperial Japanese Navy, 398
“Victory Disease”, 399, 400–401. See also “Victory Disease”
Weakness in aerial searches, 397
Yamamoto’s command of battle afloat, 398, 399
Destroyers
Designated as guards for damaged carriers, 267
Fuel consumption of, 78, 106
Importance in torpedo warfare, 332
Plane guard duties, 123, 192, 211
Use as air raid warning pickets, 138, 188
Destroyer Division 10, 341
Destroyer Division 2, 372
Destroyer Division 4, 318, 333, 335, 340, 352, 353
Gap in communications records, 335
Destroyer Division 8, 346, 368
Rendezvous with Mogami and Mikuma, 367
Destroyer Squadron 10, 18, 266, 267, 386
Destroyer Squadron 2, 343
Destroyer Squadron 3, 384
Destroyer Squadron 4, 343
Devastator. See Aircraft, U. S.
Discipline. See Imperial Japanese Navy
Dobashi, Cdr., 276, 278, 446
Doctrine, 7, 10, 15, 53, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 108, 138, 144, 158, 167, 168, 173,
175, 227, 228, 239, 269, 277, 332, 344, 391, 393, 398, 401, 402, 404–405, 407,
409, 410, 412, 413, 414, 425, 426, 432, 437, 440, 442, 487, 488, 489, 541, 545,
546, 547, 548, 557, 576, 577, 578, 588
American dive-bomber, 228
Changes as a result of Midway, 391–393
Effects on Japanese weapons systems, 84, 248
Flak suppression, 295
Importance of, 83, 163
Japanese air defense, 138
Japanese carrier, 82–86, 85, 163
“deckload spotting”, 86–87
Relative immaturity of in 1942, 85–86, 414
Japanese combat air patrol, 129–130
Japanese dive-bomber, 262
Japanese lack of amphibious against defended beaches, 489
Japanese lack of developed air-to-ground support, 487
Japanese lack of developed gunfire support, 49, 487
Japanese overreliance on the offensive, 84, 175, 248
Japanese propensity for complexity, 409
Japanese propensity for massing airpower, 86, 158, 167, 168, 171, 397,
442
Japanese propensity for torpedo, 227, 332
Japanese submarine, 373, 426
Japanese torpedo attack, 315
Rigidity of Japanese, 413–414
 Seaplane reconnaissance, 109–110, 159
Torpedo running depth, 130, 332
Doolittle, Col. James, 42
Doolittle Raid, 42–43, 60, 61
Strategic effects of, 42
Dorsetshire (heavy cruiser), 11, 131, 132
Dutch Harbor, 44, 45, 47, 48, 270, 310

Eastern Island, 48
“Eastern Operation.” See Hawaii, Japanese invasion plans for
Eastern Solomons, Battle of, 393, 417, 422
Egusa, Lt. Cdr. Takashige, 132, 153, 167, 446, 451, 496
Personality of, 132
“Eight-Eight Fleet”, 411
Ellet (destroyer), 94
Ely, Lt. Arthur, 211, 214, 446
Emergency steering. See Damage control
Enterprise (aircraft carrier), 32, 42, 61, 64, 86, 92, 93, 94, 95, 134, 135, 169,
173, 174, 175, 207, 209, 210, 213, 216, 217, 226, 274, 275, 288, 293, 295, 299,
311, 318, 319, 361, 363, 364, 365, 367, 368, 369, 371, 379, 419, 448, 548, 551,
556, 566, 567, 573, 574, 586
1525 strike force launched, 319
5 June launch, 364
6 June morning launch against Mogami and Mikuma, 369
Protracted launch, morning 4 June, 173
Essex (aircraft carrier), 58, 421, 423, 560
Etajima, 5, 287, 439, 537

F4F Wildcat (carrier fighter). See Aircraft, U.S.

Failure, nature of, 402–403
“Fateful five minutes”, 229, 231, 441. See also Myths of Battle of Midway Fifth
Communications Unit, 102. See also Communications
Fighting Eight. See VF-8
Fighting Three. See VF-3
Fiji, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 34, 38, 52, 62, 422, 427. See also Operation MI,
anticipated follow-on operations Fire, 244–245, 299. See also Damage control
Aviation gasoline, 278
 Inability to sink a warship by itself, 332, 334
Fireproof screens. See Damage control
Fire control, 140–143. See also Antiaircraft weapons
Gun batteries, 143
Inability to stop dive-bomber, 142
Negative effects of maneuver, 143–144
First Air Fleet, 13, 62, 67, 267, 271, 386
Disbanded, 391
Formation of, 85–86, 137–138
Revolutionary nature of, 86
First Communications Unit, 100, 101. See also Communications First Mobile
Striking Force, 71. See Kido Butai
“Fleet Faction”, 13, 77
Fleming, Capt. Richard E., 178, 362, 446
Death of, 362
Fletcher, RADM Frank Jack, 95, 96, 134, 135, 173, 189, 190, 275, 285, 299,
330, 331, 361, 397, 434, 446, 550, 568, 583
Abandons Yorktown, 330
Decides to transfer flag to Astoria, 298–299
Orders 4 June afternoon reconnaissance, 275
Orders Spruance to attack, 134, 173
Orders Spruance to fight the battle as he saw fit, 330
Orders Yorktown to launch at 0838, 4 June, 189
Personality of, 95
Flight decks. See Aircraft carriers; Kids Butai
Fog, 104–106
Fourth Fleet, 27
French Frigate Shoals, 50, 99, 101, 361. See also Operation K
French Indochina, 76
Friendly fire, 243
Fuchida, Cdr. Mitsuo, 71, 99, 101, 107, 108, 124, 125, 131, 162, 167, 168, 171,
172, 173, 196, 205, 229, 239, 242, 260, 386, 398, 399, 400, 432, 436, 437, 438,
439, 440, 441, 442, 446, 450, 495, 536, 537, 538, 539, 540, 544, 545, 546, 549,
550, 551, 552, 553, 555, 556, 557, 558, 561, 562, 563, 565, 569, 571, 575, 576,
577, 578, 582. See also Myths of Battle of Midway
Account of, 436–437
Account of status of flight decks at 1020, 229–230
Diagnosed with appendicitis, 71
Discredited in Japan, 441
 Importance of post-war account, 436
Injured on board Akagi, 260
Opinions on delay of counterstrike, 172
Opinions on Genda’s search plan, 107–108
Personality of, 436
Quarantined after battle, 386
Reasons for fallacious account, 438–439
Truthfulness of account, 437–438
Fuel bowser, 235. See also Kaga (aircraft carrier)
Fujita, Cdr. Isamu, 351, 352, 446, 452
Fujita, Lt. Iyozo, 48, 151, 176, 186, 225, 243, 287, 288, 446, 505, 507, 549, 555
Rescued, 287–288
Shot down, 243
Fujita, RADM Ry taro, 48, 446, 457
Fukudome, RADM Shigeru, 27, 28, 34, 36, 37, 98, 447
Fushimi, Prince Hiroyasu, 77
Fus (battleship), 46, 454, 584

Gaido, AMM2c Bruno P., 320, 566

Gallaher, Lt. Wilmer Earl, 216, 228, 234, 319, 324, 364, 447, 567
Spots Hiry , afternoon 4 June, 324
Gay, Ens. George H., 207, 553, 582
“Genda Circus”, 17
Genda, Cdr. Minoru, 17, 19, 62, 85, 86, 107, 108, 110, 112, 124, 127, 132, 153,
162, 171, 214, 215, 260, 261, 402, 408, 437, 438, 442, 447, 546, 549, 553
Evacuates Akagi, 260
Illness during battle, 124
Personality of, 17
Germany, 23, 40, 424, 429
Economic strength of, 429
Japanese plans to link up with, 30
“Germany First” strategy, 40
Gilbert Islands, 423
Glide bombing, 178, 297
Gray, Lt. James, 207, 209, 213, 216, 221, 275
Sends sighting reports to Enterprise, morning 4 June, 213
Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, 74. See also Japan, Empire of
Guadalcanal, 176, 393, 421, 422, 424, 425, 426, 489, 491, 573, 576, 577, 582,
583. See also Defeat at Midway, Impact of Guam, 22
“Gun Club”, 85

Hagikaze (destroyer), 18, 192, 267, 279, 300, 303, 304, 332, 333, 334, 337, 339,
340, 353, 452, 503, 521, 532, 533, 563, 569
Attacks Nautilus, 303
Scuttles Kaga, 337–338
Haguro (heavy cruiser), 49, 384, 455, 533, 580
Halsey, VADM William F. Jr., 42, 93, 95, 216, 447
Illness of, 95
Recommends Spruance to lead TF 16, 95
Hamakaze (destroyer), 18, 267, 321, 332, 333, 336, 340, 452, 569
Hammann (destroyer), 94, 361, 372, 374
Casualties, 374
Sunk by 1-168, 374
Hanyu, PO3c T ichir , 151
Hara, RADM Ch ichi, 10, 289, 457, 523, 536, 564, 582, 584
Hara-kiri, 14, 352, 377, 378
Harada, PO1c Kaname, 126, 151, 213, 214, 221, 447, 453, 458, 504, 505, 507,
516, 519, 526, 528, 531
Haruna (battleship), 12, 18, 100, 107, 108, 113, 186, 192, 255, 268, 288, 290,
306, 324, 326, 328, 354, 366, 452, 479, 486, 523, 532, 546, 558, 564, 572
Communications facilities of, 100
Hasegawa, Capt. Kiichi, 7
Hashimoto, Lt. Toshio, 50, 125, 253, 290, 292, 308, 310, 312, 314, 315, 316,
317, 318, 323, 328, 447, 453, 454, 517, 522, 582
Reports results of attack against Yorktown, afternoon 4 June, 308, 316
Spots Yorktown, afternoon 4 June, 312
Hashimoto, RADM Shintaro, 50
Hashirajima, 3, 4, 5, 12, 17, 25, 29, 34, 42, 44, 61, 77, 101, 105, 385, 386, 391,
451, 496, 498, 580
Characteristics of, 5
“Hashirajima Fleet”, 5. See also Battleships, Japanese
Hawaii, 11, 25, 28, 29, 30, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 43, 48, 50, 52, 53, 66, 67,
75, 92, 93, 99, 149, 161, 329, 330, 359, 424, 425, 426, 428, 536, 546, 584
American defenses on, 40
Japanese Army attitudes towards invasion of, 28, 37, 43
Japanese invasion plans for, 28, 33, 43
 Logistical studies regarding invasion, 29
Hawaii sakusen. See Pearl Harbor, attack against
Henderson, Major Lofton R., 176, 186, 447
Death of, 176
Hermes (aircraft carrier), 11
Hiei (battleship), 49, 50, 343, 392, 455, 491, 533
Hik w Maru (hospital ship), 386
Hik ch , 7, 8, 9, 10, 125, 126, 127, 128, 132, 136, 149, 156, 162, 165, 168, 170,
184, 193, 196, 216, 221, 230, 234, 252, 278, 292, 323, 324, 334, 335, 338, 339,
341, 445, 447, 448, 497, 552
Briefs aircrew, 125
Duties of, 7, 136
Hik kitai. See Formations, Air
Hik taich . See Formations, Air
Hino, PO1c Masato, 151, 221, 503, 504, 507, 534
Hinomaru, 181, 182, 239, 326, 477
Used as aiming point, 239, 326
Hirohito, Emperor, 97, 385, 386, 537, 581
Considers issuing Imperial Rescript commemorating Midway, 387
Leads coverup of disaster, 385
Learns of results of battle, 385
Hiroshima, 4, 5, 12, 88
Hiry (aircraft carrier), 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 19, 42, 55, 77, 87, 88, 90, 112, 119,
120, 121, 125, 126, 128, 129, 130, 132, 133, 136, 140, 142, 143, 145, 146, 151,
152, 159, 166, 167, 168, 176, 178, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 186, 188, 192, 193,
195, 196, 199, 200, 202, 203, 204, 205, 207, 219, 221, 223, 224, 225, 226, 230,
232, 233, 236, 241, 242, 243, 248, 252, 253, 255, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 267,
268, 269, 270, 271, 276, 280, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 292, 293,
294, 295, 297, 298, 299, 306, 308, 309, 310, 311, 315, 316, 318, 320, 323, 324,
325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 331, 333, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343, 344, 345, 349, 350,
351, 352, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359, 361, 363, 364, 365, 383, 388, 389, 399, 407,
412, 417, 418, 419, 421, 422, 434, 446, 447, 448, 449, 451, 474, 476, 477, 478,
493, 494, 496, 497, 498, 499, 500, 501, 502, 503, 504, 505, 507, 508, 509, 510,
511, 512, 516, 517, 518, 519, 520, 521, 522, 523, 524, 540, 542, 546, 547, 548,
549, 550, 551, 552, 553, 554, 555, 557, 558, 559, 560, 561, 562, 563, 564, 567,
568, 569, 571, 572, 579, 580, 583, 585, 587, 588, 589, 613
Abandoned, 5 June, 349–351
Aircraft losses during attack on Midway, 204
Airgroup strength after 1020, 4 June, 269, 288
 Airgroup strength after 1330, 4 June, 298
Airgroup strength after 1600, 4 June, 323
Casualties, 359, 476
Characteristics of, 9, 471, 474–476
Cost of, 419
Damage control aboard, 328, 341
Damage to, 326–327, 328, 339, 343, 355
Launches 1330
strike, 4 June, 292
Movements after 1020
attack, 4 June, 265, 289
Recovers 1330
strike, 4 June, 311
Sinks, 5 June, 357–359
Hiy (aircraft carrier), 390, 392, 418, 422, 539
Hodate, Lt. Cdr. Ken, 18
Hood (battle cruiser), 491
Hopper, Ens. George, 315
Horikoshi, Jiro 103. See also Aircraft, Japanese
Hornet (aircraft carrier), 32, 42, 61, 64, 92, 93, 94, 134, 135, 169, 173, 174, 175,
188, 206, 271, 272, 274, 275, 288, 299, 319, 343, 361, 364, 367, 368, 369, 377,
419, 435, 448, 544, 548, 562, 570, 571, 573, 586
0755 launch, 4 June, 174
1530 launch, 5 June, 364
1600 launch, 4 June, 319
Equipped with Combat Information Center (CIC), 188
Movement of air group, 4 June, 174, 271–273
Recovers morning strike, 4 June, 299
Results of morning strike, 4 June, 274
Travails of air group, 4 June, 329
H sh (aircraft carrier), 7, 15, 49, 91, 270, 284, 355, 361, 372, 382, 418, 453,
572, 575, 579, 580, 583, 587
Launches scouting aircraft, 5 June, 355
Hosogaya, VADM Moshir , 28, 46, 355, 447, 460
Hughes (destroyer), 94, 330, 361, 375
HYPO, 92, 93, 548, 549, 550, 555. See also Intelligence, U.S.
Hy ga (battleship), 46, 454
First prototype radar fitted on board, 136
I-121 (submarine), 99, 458
I-123 (submarine), 99, 101, 458. See also Operation K
I-168 (submarine), 99, 101, 342, 348, 361, 362, 373, 374, 375, 449, 458, 578
Attacks Yorktown, 372–375
Bombards Midway, 348
Depth-charged, 375
Ordered to bombard Midway, 342
Ordered to locate and sink Yorktown, 362
Scouts Midway, 99
I-19 (submarine), 422
I-52 (submarine), 491
Ibusuki, Lt. Masanobu, 146, 151, 156, 176, 186, 213, 447, 500, 501, 506
Ichiki, Col. Kiyanao, 48, 447, 456, 489, 490, 578
Ichiki Detachment, 48, 487, 489
Iizuka, Lt. Masao, 126, 206, 207, 322, 323, 326, 502, 503, 506, 515, 553
Imperial General Headquarters (IGHQ), 24
Imperial Japanese Army, 439
Attitudes towards Operation MI, 37
Commits troops to Hawaiian invasion, 43
Commits troops to Operation MI, 43
Prerogatives in strategic planning, 26
Refuses to commit troops to Operation MI, 38
Strategic priorities of, 25
Strengths in pre-war planning, 412
Imperial Japanese Navy
Amphibious capabilities of, 425
Belief in decisive battle, 26, 403, 404
Discipline within, 76–77
Early war reputation of, 11, 15
Insubordination within, 77
Internal struggles over policymaking authority, 24
Logistical capabilities, 35, 425
Military culture of, 71, 76–77, 298, 389, 408
Mistakes at Battle of Midway. See Defeat at Midway
Naval Aviation. See also Aircraft, Japanese and aircraft carriers,
Japanese
Importance of, 26, 58–59
Inflexibility of carrier air group organization, 65–66
Need for refitting and retraining, 91
 Percentage of veterans in airgroups, 88–89
Proficiency of, 11, 15, 87–89, 129, 131–132, 171, 174, 192, 295, 434
Shortage of aircraft, 89–90
Training, 87–88
Night-fighting prowess, 331–332, 434
Numerical superiority over U.S. Navy in early 1942, 433
Over-aggressiveness of, 64, 268, 320, 412
Parochial outlook of, 415
Preference for massing airpower, 137–138
Preference for offensive factors, 112, 403, 408
Propensity for complex planning, 52, 409
Relations with Imperial Japanese Army, 25, 389, 439
Reliance on officer corps for technical matters, 256
Reluctance to improvise, 103–104
Reluctance to learn from mistakes, 438–439
Shipboard life, 70–71, 117, 244
Indian Ocean, 11, 19, 30, 31, 32, 38, 39, 57, 58, 88, 89, 103, 110, 112, 131, 145,
405, 406, 407, 417, 494, 497, 498, 536, 541, 542, 545, 549
Aircraft rearming snafus during, 131, 417
Imperial Japanese Army attitudes towards, 30
Plans for operations in, 29–30
War games, 30
Inoue, VADM Shigeyoshi, 27, 31, 32, 57, 58, 63, 64, 77, 268, 447, 459
Advocates operations in southwest Pacific, 31
Intelligence, Japanese
Detects increased U.S. radio traffic, 99
Estimates of U.S. carrier forces, 32, 63, 64, 66
6 June, 382
Estimates of U.S. forces on Midway, 66
Radio direction finding, 99, 100, 102
Intelligence, U.S., 60–61, 92. See also Codes;
Code breaking
Confirms location of Operation MI, 93
Estimates of Japanese carrier forces, 93
Intercepts Tone No. 4 0728 sighting report, 161
Interservice relations. See Imperial Japanese Army and Imperial Japanese Navy
Invasion Force, 49, 92, 98, 178, 433. See also Tanaka, RADM Raizo
Attacked by B-17s, 106
Attacked by PBYs, 114
 Sighted by PBY, 106
Invasion Force Main Body, 49, 269. See also Kond , VADM Nobutake Ise
(battleship), 16, 46, 136, 184, 454, 497
Isokaze (destroyer), 18, 192, 267, 332, 333, 335, 336, 340, 366, 388, 449, 452,
558, 569, 573
Scuttles S ry , 336
Isom, Dallas, 159, 161, 550, 551, 585
Isonami (destroyer), 384, 388, 453
It , Masanori, 387
Iura, Cdr. Sh jir , 98, 447
Iwabuchi, Capt. Sanji, 343, 452, 507, 518, 521
Iwagami, Cdr. J ichi, 303, 337, 452
Iwakuni, 88
Iwashiro, PO1c Yoshio, 156, 206, 230, 500, 506
Iyo Nada, 17

Jaluit, 50, 458, 459

Japan, Empire of, 20, 561, 585
American embargo of, 76
Development into a modern nation, 72
Economic power of, 75, 427
Escaped from white colonialism, 72
Merchant marine of, 35
Racist outlook of, 73–74
Resentment of America, 75, 76
Resentment of white colonialism, 73–74
Social characteristics of, 71–77, 268–269, 350, 400, 411, 438
Strategic dilemmas facing, 33
Strategic options available to, 26
Territorial conquests of, 22, 25, 427
Java, 11, 19, 22, 39, 54, 65, 354, 409, 535
Jints (light cruiser), 49, 184, 185, 199, 457
Johnson, Lt. Cdr. Robert R., 272, 274
Johnston Island, 52
Juny (aircraft carrier), 46, 67, 90, 91, 270, 392, 418, 422, 446, 448, 459, 526,
527, 528, 529, 530, 531, 532, 533, 535, 539, 543, 583, 589
Characteristics of, 46
Kadano, Lt. Hiroshi, 350
Kaga (aircraft carrier), 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 55, 57, 58, 60, 62, 88, 90, 107, 112, 120,
121, 123, 126, 128, 129, 130, 132, 133, 138, 140, 143, 151, 156, 157, 159, 166,
167, 168, 176, 180, 181, 183, 184, 189, 192, 193, 196, 199, 201, 202, 203, 204,
206, 207, 210, 211, 213, 214, 216, 219, 220, 221, 223, 228, 230, 231, 232, 234,
235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 241, 242, 248, 249, 250, 251, 253, 255, 256, 261, 265,
266, 267, 268, 276, 278, 279, 280, 281, 284, 290, 299, 300, 301, 302, 303, 304,
305, 309, 312, 318, 320, 321, 323, 324, 331, 332, 333, 334, 337, 338, 339, 341,
349, 363, 387, 388, 398, 410, 417, 418, 419, 437, 446, 447, 448, 449, 450, 466,
467, 468, 470, 476, 477, 478, 491, 492, 493, 494, 497, 498, 499, 502, 503, 506,
508, 509, 510, 511, 512, 515, 516, 521, 523, 524, 535, 539, 540, 542, 543, 545,
546, 547, 548, 549, 550, 551, 552, 554, 555, 556, 557, 559, 560, 562, 563, 564,
565, 566, 568, 569, 571, 580, 583, 585, 586, 587, 588, 589, 613
Abandoned, 320
Aircraft losses during morning attack on Midway, 4 June, 204
Antiaircraft weapons, 138–140
Attacked by dive-bombers, 1020 4 June, 232–236
Attacked by VT-6, 4 June, 213–215
Casualties, 248, 337, 476
Casualties among engineering staff, 280–281, 300–301
Characteristics of, 8, 466–470
Cost of, 419
Damage to, 248, 276, 303–304, 337
Decimation of senior officers, 235
Discovery of wreckage from, 491–493
Fueling system unsecured, 250
Imperial portrait transferred to Hagikaze, 300
Island hit, 235, 304
Loses power, afternoon 4 June, 300
Maintains power after damage, 279
Scuttled, 337–339, 388
Sights dive-bombers, 1020 4 June, 232
Suffers fuel-air explosion, 255–256
Unstowed ordance on hangar deck, 250
Kagoshima, 18, 88
Kaku, Capt. Tomeo, 10, 12, 19, 132, 263, 292, 323, 324, 327, 328, 343, 349,
350, 351, 447, 451, 453. See also Hiry (aircraft carrier)
Death of, 351
Delivers 4 June dusk strike flight briefing, 323
Delivers 4 June Kobayashi flight briefing, 263
Kakuta, RADM Kakuji, 46, 48, 284, 310, 447, 459
Kami, Capt. Shigenori, 29, 447
Kamikawa Maru (seaplane tender), 47, 457, 533
Kamikaze, 247
Kanao, Cdr. Ry ichi, 236, 237, 238, 239, 252, 281, 282, 305, 321, 335, 336,
447, 557, 560, 563, 565, 567, 568
Reaction to news that S ry was to be scuttled , 335
Kanbaku. See Aircraft, Japanese, Type 99 carrier bomber
Kaneko, Lt. Tadashi, 149, 151, 447, 500, 502, 503, 506, 549
Kank . See Aircraft, Japanese, Type 97 carrier attack aircraft
Kanoya, 88, 103
Kansen. See Aircraft, Japanese, Type 0 carrier fighter
Kasanohara, 88
Kat , Adm. Tomosabur , 75
Katsumi, Cdr: Motoi, 361, 364, 365, 447, 452, 453
Kawaguchi, Capt. Masao, 235
Kawaguchi, Cdr. Susumu, 10, 235, 292, 323, 324, 327, 329, 447, 451, 497, 568,
574, 575
Kawamata, PO3c Teruo, 224
Kazpgumo (destroyer), 18, 332, 341, 350, 351, 452, 532
Damaged by Hiry , 341
Kempeitai, 387
Kendari, 88
Kido, Lord Privy Seal Koichi, 385
Kid Butai, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 26, 27, 35, 46, 48, 54,
55, 56, 57, 59, 61, 63, 64, 69, 72, 77, 82, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 93, 96, 100, 101,
102, 103, 104, 106, 109, 110, 111, 113, 117, 119, 121, 122, 125, 126, 131, 133,
134, 135, 136, 138, 140, 144, 145, 149, 150, 151, 153, 156, 159, 163, 164, 165,
167, 168, 169, 171, 172, 173, 174, 176, 177, 178, 180, 181, 183, 184, 186, 187,
190, 191, 192, 198, 199, 200, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212,
215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 225, 226, 227, 230, 231, 233, 239,
261, 262, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 274, 278, 279, 283, 284,
285, 287, 288, 290, 295, 298, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 319, 324, 339, 340, 341,
342, 343, 355, 366, 368, 383, 386, 401, 402, 405, 406, 407, 410, 413, 419, 421,
424, 426, 431, 433, 435, 437, 438, 439, 441, 448, 477, 487, 490, 493, 498, 517,
518, 519, 535, 541, 542, 545, 546, 548, 549, 550, 551, 552, 554, 555, 558, 569,
575, 579
Airgroup strengths of, 90, 433
Anticipation of need for second strike, 112–113, 133, 149
As raiding force, 35, 113
Attacked by VT-6, 210–214
Attacked by VT-8, 206–209
Changes course to 070 at 0917, 4 June, 205
Delayed sortie from Hashirajima, 69, 92, 412
Departs Hashirajima, 12
Duty carrier, 78
Forced onto defensive by American air attacks, 216, 230
Formations of,
Air Defense, 137–138, 211
Carrier operations, 121–122
Distorted, 192, 210, 219, 223
Late afternoon 4 June, 307, 308, 324
Night Steaming, 113
Operational concentration vs. dispersal, 137–138
Widely dispersed, 134, 209
High operational tempo of, 12
 Launches morning strike, 0430 4 June, 128–129
Losses suffered by, 12, 18, 269
Planned course after morning launch, 125
Plans for morning strike against Midway, 4 June, 112–113
Recovers aircraft, 0837 4 June, 190–197, 199
Reserve antishipping strike force, 63, 113, 131, 165
Returns to Hashirajima, 385–386
Shortage of fighters, 168, 171
Sighted by Adams, 308
Sighted by Ady, 134
Sighted by Gray, 209
Sighted by McClusky, 217
Sighted by Nautilus, 184
Sighted by VT-3, 217
Status of flight decks at 1020, 229
Kikuchi, Lt. Rokur , 200
Kimikawa Maru (seaplane tender), 46, 461, 533
Kimmel, Adm. Husband E., 40
Kimura, PO1c Koreo, 228, 239
Kimura, RADM Susumu, 18, 199, 228, 239, 266, 288, 447, 452, 456, 501, 506,
513, 515, 517, 518, 519, 526, 528
King, Adm. Ernest J., 93
Kinkaid, RADM Thomas C., 214
Kirishima (battleship), 12, 18, 100, 108, 133, 170, 184, 185, 187, 268, 290, 343,
354, 386, 392, 452, 456, 479, 486, 523, 533, 546, 572
Kiska, 45, 46, 47, 52, 65, 285, 355, 460, 533, 580
Invaded, 383
Kiso (light cruiser), 46, 460, 532, 533
Kitakami (light cruiser), 46, 454
Kobayashi, Lt. Michio, 132, 262, 264, 283, 286, 288, 292, 293, 297, 299, 447,
451, 454, 459, 504, 517, 520, 522, 524, 525, 527, 563, 564
Attack on Yorktown, 292–298
Death of, 297
Leads Hiry counterstrike, 262
Kodama, WO Yoshimi, 151, 176, 504, 507
Kokuy Maru (oiler), 78, 452
K k Hombu (Navy Air Technical Bureau), 103
Komatsu, VADM Marquis Teruhisa, 97, 98, 216, 447, 458
Fails to notify Combined Fleet of failure of submarine operations, 98
 Relationship with Imperial family, 97
Komura, Capt. Keiz , 132, 198, 447, 451
Kond , Lt. Takemori, 292, 293
Kond , VADM Nobutake, 19, 49, 50, 51, 56, 92, 216, 266, 268, 269, 284, 286,
318, 331, 332, 340, 342, 343, 344, 352, 354, 355, 363, 366, 369, 372, 382, 383,
447, 455, 520, 521, 523, 568
Placed in charge of night battle, 342
Kong (battleship), 49, 50, 455, 532
Koyama, Lt. Masao, 377
Kroeger, Lt.(jg) Edwin J., 239
Kumano (heavy cruiser), 49, 56, 345, 346, 363, 392, 456, 488
Kunisada, Lt. Yoshio, 248, 249, 250, 255, 256, 300, 301, 302, 303, 304, 309,
338, 339, 447, 557, 559, 560, 563, 564, 565, 568, 569
Description of damage to Kaga, 303–304
Escapes from Kaga, 301
Kure, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 49, 56, 64, 66, 88, 194, 200, 375, 386, 391, 462, 470, 497,
498, 517, 540, 541, 543, 553
Kure Island, 48
Kurita, VADM Takeo, 49, 345, 346, 434, 447, 456, 570
Kuroda, Lt. Makoto, 132, 447
Kuroshima, Capt. Kameto, 28, 29, 37, 52, 97, 198, 344, 353, 409, 411, 447, 537,
552
Kusaka, RADM Ry nosuke, 15, 17, 19, 26, 27, 77, 113, 132, 153, 162, 163, 164,
171, 183, 259, 260, 266, 320, 352, 391, 397, 399, 437, 438, 442, 447, 450, 536,
541, 544, 549, 550, 551, 558, 583
Against suicide of First Air Fleet staff, 352
Diagnoses reasons for Japanese failure, 391, 397
Personality of, 15
Kusumoto, Cdr. Ikuto, 9, 252, 447, 451
Begins organizing firefighting party to reboard S ry , 334
Kyokut Maru (oiler), 77, 452, 532
Ky ma, Lt. Cdr. Takeo, 350, 351, 357
Ky sh , 18, 103, 427

Lae, 31, 58
Landing Signal Officer (LSO), 193. See also Aircraft carriers, Japanese
Langley (aircraft carrier), 7
Leonard, Lt. Bill, 314
Leslie, Lt. Cdr. Maxwell “Max” F., 217, 225, 226, 231, 275, 447, 562, 586
Lexington (aircraft carrier), 7, 31, 32, 41, 61, 63, 86, 93, 94, 407, 419, 537, 539,
545
Lindsey, Lt. Cdr. Eugene “Gene” E., 210, 211, 213, 214, 217, 447
London Naval Treaty, 23, 75
Japanese resentment of, 75
“Long Lance.” See Type 93 torpedo
Lord, Walter, 385, 400, 408, 432, 433, 539, 543, 544, 546, 553, 554, 555, 556,
557, 558, 559, 560, 561, 562, 563, 564, 565, 566, 567, 568, 569, 570, 571, 572,
574, 576, 577, 578, 583, 588
Lundstrom, John, 41, 95, 273, 433, 440, 441, 498, 536, 537, 538, 539, 540, 541,
543, 548, 549, 550, 551, 553, 554, 555, 556, 558, 561, 562, 563, 564, 566, 567,
568, 573, 574, 576, 577, 580, 583, 588

Maeda, WO Takeshi, 232, 236, 304, 305, 338, 387, 448, 455, 459, 496, 520,
556, 557, 565, 569, 576
Quarantined after battle, 387
Maikaze (destroyer), 18, 267, 303, 321, 332, 334, 338, 339, 340, 353, 452, 519,
532, 533, 569
Main Body, 44, 46, 49, 55, 92, 101, 113, 284, 320, 355, 362, 368, 434
Placement relative to Nagumo, 55, 270
Maizuru Third Special Pioneer Force, 45, 67. See also SNLF
Makigumo (destroyer), 18, 319, 332, 341, 350, 351, 355, 357, 452, 532, 566,
571, 572
Damaged by Hiry during evacuation, 350
Scuttles Hiry , 351
Makishima, Teiuchi, 235, 387, 448, 556, 558, 565, 568, 571, 572, 583
Threatened by kempeitai, 387
Witness to attack on Akagi, 241
Mako. See Taiwan
Malaya, 11, 19, 22, 39, 65, 412, 425, 427
Manchuria, 22, 25, 26, 77
Marine Raiders, 97, 489. See also Midway, ground defenses of Maruyama, PO1c
Taisuke, 200
Massey, Lt. Cdr. Lance E. “Lem”, 217, 221, 223, 224, 225, 226, 448
Masuda, Cdr. Sh go, 7, 126, 127, 128, 130, 149, 162, 184, 221, 341, 448, 450
Matsukawa, Lt. Cdr. Takeshi, 339
Matsumoto, PO1c Sadao, 296, 520
Maury (destroyer), 94
Maya (heavy cruiser), 46, 67, 459, 532, 533
McClusky, Lt. Cdr. Clarence Wade Jr., 216, 217, 228, 239, 364, 448
Follows Arashi to Kids Butai, 217
Searches for Japanese fleet, 217
Sends 1002 sighting report to Spruance, 217
McCuskey, Lt. (jg) Elbert S., 293, 566
Mechanics, aircraft, 119, 248, 252, 281. See also Defeat at Midway, impact of
Medical treatment, 309, 350
For wounded at Hashirajima, 386–387
Meiji Restoration, 72
Midget submarines, 49
Midway. See also Eastern Island; See also Sand Island
Airgroup size, 96
Airpower as of 5 June, 359–361
Air searches 5 June, 361
As outpost of Hawaii, 34, 35
Battle of. See Operation MI
Decisiveness of. See Defeat at Midway
Importance of. See Defeat at Midway
Myths and mythos. See Myths of Battle of Midway
Reasons for Japanese defeat. See Defeat at Midway
Characteristics of, 33, 488
Damage sustained during 4 June morning attack, 203, 348, 487–488
Detects Tomonaga attack on radar, 135
Fuel consumption of, 96
Ground defenses of, 97, 487–490
Invasion plans for, 48–49, 487–490
U.S. reinforcement of, 96
Usefulness as base, 33, 34, 35, 426
Mikawa, RADM Gun`ichi, 49, 455, 540
Mikuma (heavy cruiser), 49, 56, 345, 346, 347, 348, 362, 363, 366, 367, 368,
369, 370, 371, 372, 375, 376, 377, 378, 379, 380, 381, 382, 384, 387, 388, 447,
448, 449, 456, 488, 573, 574, 575, 586
Abandoned,6 June, 375–376
Attacked by B-17s, 5 June, 363
Attacked by Enterprise air group, afternoon 6 June, 370–371
Attacked by Hornet air group, afternoon 6 June, 377
Attacked by Hornet air group, morning 6 June, 368
 Attacked by VMSB-241, 5 June, 362
Casualties, 380
Damage control aboard, 348
Damage from air attacks,6 June, 370–371
Damage from own Type 93 torpedoes,6 June, 371, 379–381
Damage from ramming, 5 June, 346
Sinks,6 June, 380
Minegishi, WO Yoshijiro, 290, 293, 507, 516, 520, 521
Minesweeper Group, 106

Minneapolis (heavy cruiser), 94, 367, 613

Mitoya, Lt. Cdr. Sesu, 232, 234, 235, 302, 448, 556, 557, 565
Reliability as witness, 556
Mitscher, Capt. Marc A., 173, 174, 319, 448. See also Hornet (aircraft carrier)
Mitsubishi A6M carrier fighter. See Aircraft, Japanese
Mitsubishi aircraft company, 89, 103 Miura, Cdr. Gishiro, 104, 162, 341, 448,
525, 527, 528, 529, 531
Miwa, Capt. Yoshitake, 29, 32, 63, 448
Miyano, Lt. Cdr. Toyosaburo, 235
Miyauchi, PO2c Masaji, 200
Miyo, Cdr. Tatsukichi, 34, 35, 36, 448
Critique of Combined Fleet operational plan, 34
Mk. 37 director, 142. See also Fire control
Mogami (heavy cruiser), 49, 56, 345, 346, 347, 348, 359, 362, 363, 366, 367,
368, 369, 370, 371, 372, 375, 376, 377, 378, 379, 381, 382, 383, 384, 388, 448,
449, 456, 488, 573, 574, 575
Attacked by B-17s, 5 June, 363
Attacked by Enterprise air group, afternoon 6 June, 370–371
Attacked by Hornet air group, afternoon 6 June, 377
Attacked by Hornet air group, morning 6 June, 368
Attacked by VMSB-241, 5 June, 362
Damage control aboard, 348, 368, 377–378
Damage to, 346–347, 368, 370, 377–378
Rams Mikuma, 5 June, 346
Monaghan (destroyer), 94, 375
Monden, Cdr. Ichiji, 235
Mori, Lt. Shigeru, 128, 182, 312, 315, 316
Mori, PO Juzo, 238
Morinaga, WO Takayoshi, 231, 232, 234, 236, 250, 278, 281, 338, 448, 569
Morris (destroyer), 94
Murata, Lt. Cdr. Shigeharu, 131, 132, 448, 450
Murphy, Lt. Cdr. John W., 345, 348, 359, 361, 448, 549. See also Tambor
(submarine)
Relieved of command after battle, 359
Sends late sighing report of CruDiv 7, 348, 359
Murray, ACR James F., 242
Murray, Capt. George D., 448, 558
Mutsu (battleship), 49, 55, 366, 383, 453, 575
Myoko (heavy cruiser), 49, 384, 455, 533, 580
Myths of Battle of Midway, 431–442
Importance of mythos surrounding great battles, 431
Japanese aviator corps wiped out,
Late launch of Tone No. 4, 432
Nagumo’s ability to counterstrike immediately, 432
“Overwhelming odds” facing U.S. Navy, 432–436
Role of Fuchida in creating, 436–442
Role of Operation AL as feint, 431
Role of VT-8, 432
State of Japanese flight decks at 1020, 4 June, 431
Two-phase air search, 432
Yamamoto’s withholding intelligence from Nagumo, 431
Nachi (heavy cruiser), 46, 460, 532
Nagamori, Lt. Cdr. Yoshio, 103
Nagano, Adm. Osami, 24, 29, 34, 36, 37, 38, 42, 43, 44, 52, 53, 385, 389, 438,
448
Accedes to Yamamoto’s plans for Operation MI, 36
Accedes to Yamamoto’s plans for Pearl Harbor, 24
Naganuma, 1st Lt. Michitaro, 238, 252, 322, 323, 333, 335, 336, 448, 558, 560,
567, 568
Escapes from S ry , 335
Nagara (light cruiser), 12, 18, 100, 108, 121, 133, 144, 152, 184, 185, 187, 191,
192, 199, 260, 265, 266, 267, 284, 288, 289, 292, 308, 318, 319, 332, 339, 343,
352, 354, 361, 386, 391, 452, 501, 503, 545, 552, 564, 566, 568, 570
Becomes flagship of Kido Butai, 266 Nagasawa Ko, 62 Nagasuki, Cdr. Seiji,
321, 567 Nagato (battleship), 49, 55, 262, 366, 383, 453, 575
Nagayasu, 2nd Lt. Yasukuni, 152, 178, 243, 448, 549, 551, 558, 559
Nagumo, VADM Chuichi, 6, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 27, 32, 33, 35, 42, 43, 44,
48, 49, 51, 52, 55, 56, 57, 62, 63, 64, 66, 69, 77, 78, 84, 87, 90, 91, 94, 97, 98,
99, 101, 102, 103, 104, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 112, 113, 114, 123, 124, 127,
129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 145, 146, 148, 149, 152, 153, 156, 158, 159, 161,
162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 180, 183,
186, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 197, 198, 205, 206, 209, 210, 216, 219, 228, 229,
230, 231, 239, 242, 257, 259, 260, 261, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271,
276, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 291, 292, 297, 298, 306, 308, 310, 311, 318,
320, 321, 324, 331, 332, 333, 334, 335, 336, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343, 344, 349,
351, 352, 353, 354, 355, 361, 366, 386, 388, 393, 397, 398, 400, 401, 406, 407,
408, 410, 412, 413, 417, 431, 432, 433, 434, 435, 437, 438, 439, 441, 442, 448,
449, 450, 496, 536, 540, 542, 544, 549, 550, 551, 552, 553, 554, 555, 556, 557,
558, 560, 561, 562, 563, 564, 565, 566, 567, 568, 569, 570, 571, 572, 573, 577,
578, 580, 589. See also “Nagumo Report”
0855 4 June communication to Yamamoto, 198
1000 4 June communication to Yamamoto, 216
1130 4 June communication to Yamamoto, 266
Aggressiveness of, 267, 268, 270, 399
Attempts to force surface battle, 4 June, 267–268, 285
Comments regarding proficiency of airgroups, 87, 89, 192
Decides to break radio silence,2 June, 104–106, 397
Decides to delay counterstrike against U.S. carriers, morning 4 June,
170, 412
Delegation to subordinates, 17
Fails to act on intelligence estimates, 2-3 June, 100–104, 408, 412
Feels little urgency to counterstrike, morning 4 June, 171
Late departure from Hashirajima, 412
Morale post-defeat, 352
Orders rearming reversed, morning 4 June, 161–170
Orders second strike against Midway, morning 4 June, 152–154
Personality of, 13, 103, 408
Prepares for night combat, afternoon 4 June, 331–333, 340
Reassumes command of Kids Butai, 4 June, 266, 284
Receives faulty intelligence from CruDiv 8 staff, afternoon 4 June, 340
Receives Tone No. 4 sighting report, 0740 4 June, 159–160
Relationship with Yamamoto Isoroku, 13
Relieved of command, evening 4 June, 342
Reports to Yamamoto after the battle, 391
Resists leaving Akagi’s bridge, 259–260
Retained in command after Midway disaster, 388
 Sends 0230 5 June battle summary, 349–350
Tactical situation after 1800, 4 June, 331
Transfers flag to Nagara, 260–261, 266
“Nagumo Report”, 159, 161, 190, 205, 219, 242, 257, 286, 287, 334, 335, 386,
437, 439
Nakagawa, WO Shizuo, 296, 297, 448, 460, 521
Nakajima aircraft company, 89
Nakajima B5N carrier attack aircraft. See Aircraft, Japanese
Nakasugi, Cdr. Seiji, 338, 452, 569, 572
Nakayama, Ens. Shimematsu, 286, 295, 296, 297, 521, 563
Nakazawa, WO Iwao, 296, 460, 521
Nauticos Corporation, 491
Nautilus (submarine), 184, 185, 187, 191, 192, 199, 210, 217, 279, 302, 303,
304, 359, 424, 446, 491, 551, 552, 554, 563, 564, 565, 588
Attacks Kaga, afternoon 4 June, 302–303
Attacks Kids Butai, morning 4 June, 185
Depth-charged by Arashi, 210
Depth-charged by Hagikaze, 303
Sights Kids Butai, morning 4 June, 184
Navajo (fleet tug), 361, 375
Naval airpower. See Aircraft carriers; Imperial Japanese Navy
Naval arms treaties. See London and Washington Naval Treaties
Naval General Headquarters, 25, 34, 52, 59, 67, 98
Criticism of Combined Fleet operational plans, 34
Loses internal battles over strategic policymaking, 24, 36, 389
Navy Day, 12
Navy Ministry, 387, 495
Newell, Lt. (jg) Dale S., 366
New Britain, 60
New Caledonia, 27, 40, 52, 62
New Guinea, 10, 22, 31, 57, 60, 426
New Hebrides, 27, 427
New Orleans (heavy cruiser), 94, 367, 368, 369
Night fighting 331–333. See also Imperial Japanese Navy
Importance of destroyers, 332
Importance of torpedoes, 332
Scouting arrangements for, 332
Nihon Kaigun. S ee Imperial Japanese Navy
Nikuhaku-hitchu 315. See also Doctrine, Japanese torpedo attack
Nimitz, Admiral Chester W, 32, 40, 41, 42, 53, 60, 61, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 99,
134, 359, 361, 366, 428, 433, 435, 436, 448
Advocates usage of “strong attritional tactics”, 96
Deliberately exposes Halsey’s carriers to Japanese, 93
Displeasure with performance of U.S. submarines, 359
Personality of, 40, 93
Placement of forces, 96
Willingness to give battle, 93
Nippon Maru (oiler), 78, 452
Nishibayashi, Lt. Cdr., 162, 260, 448
Nishimura, RADM Shoji, 49, 448, 455, 525
Nisshin (seaplane tender), 49, 345, 453
Nomura, Adm. Kichisaburo, 429
Nonaka, WO Satoru, 204
Norris, Maj. Benjamin W., 185, 186, 349, 448
Death of, 349
Northampton (heavy cruiser), 94
North Sea Detachment, 67. See also Imperial Japanese Army
Noumea, 27
Nowaki (destroyer), 18, 123, 181, 188, 192, 239, 241, 260, 267, 276, 287, 288,
300, 309, 332, 333, 340, 353, 452, 504, 505, 532, 533, 569

Oahu, 28, 33, 34, 44, 51, 67, 425, 426

bayashi, WO Yukio, 312, 517, 522
Oboro (destroyer), 67, 532, 533, 580
O’Flaherty, Ens. Frank W., 319
gawa, Lt. Shoichi, 126, 156, 202, 281, 377, 448, 450, 456, 515, 518, 519, 557
Death of, 281
hara, Cdr. Hisashi, 230, 236, 237, 252, 261, 386, 448, 500, 506, 546
Blown off Ssryu, 261
Quarantined after battle, 386
hara, PO2c Hiroshi, 230
ishi, Capt. Tomatsu, 17, 104, 162, 352, 448, 514, 526, 528, 531
i (light cruiser), 46, 454
Okada, Capt. Jisaku, 8, 10, 211, 213, 214, 216, 232, 234, 235, 241, 300, 304,
337, 448, 450, 451, 526, 528, 531, 557. See also Kaga (aircraft carrier)
Death of, 235
Skill at evasive maneuvers, 213
Ominato, 67, 580
Ono, Lt. Cdr. Kenjiro, 162
Ono, WO Zenji, 151, 183, 186, 206
Operation AL, 19, 52
As diversion, 43–44
Flaws in planning for, 47
Force distributions of, 45, 47, 532–534
Operational plan for, 43–47
Origins of, 37
Second distribution, 46, 54
Third distribution, 47
Operation Galvanic, 423. See also Gilbert Islands
Operation K. See also Operation MI, Air reconnaissance plans for; See also
French Frigate Shoals; See also 1-123 (submarine)
Failure of, 99, 101, 102, 398
Operation MI, 13, 18, 19, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 51, 52, 54, 58, 59, 61, 64, 65, 69,
80, 93, 97, 267, 433, 450, 513, 579
Air reconnaissance plans for, 48, 50
Anticipated dispostion of American forces, 51
Anticipated follow-on operations, 51–52
Anticipated location of decisive battle, 51
Attitudes towards within fleet, 19, 61–62
Communications plan for. See Communications
Dispersal of forces, 50, 52, 53, 55–56, 398, 435
Flaws in planning, 52–57, 58–59
Japanese strategic situation before, 19
Lack of training for, 67, 489
“N-Day”, 44
Need for full-strength carrier forces, 57, 58, 64
Operational orders distributed, 67
Operational plan for, 43–57
Scale of, 51
Size of battlefield, 37
Strategic debate over, 34–37
Submarine reconnaissance plans for, 50
Tight operational timetable, 56–57, 65, 67, 69, 169–170
War games, 61, 67
Attitudes towards, 61–62
Operation MO 59. See also Coral Sea, Battle of
 Operational timetable, 57
Osmus, Ens. Wesley Frank, 224, 288, 320, 448, 563
Death of, 563
Interrogation of, 288
Owens, 207
Owens, Lt. James C. Jr., 207
Ozawa, VADM Jisaburo, 14, 448
Role in establishment of First Air Fleet, 86

Palmyra, 28, 38
Panama Canal, 97
PBY See Aircraft, U.S.; Scouting aircraft, U.S.
Pearl and Hermes Reef, 361
Pearl Harbor, attack against, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 22, 24, 25, 27, 28, 32, 39,
40, 43, 44, 46, 48, 50, 51, 53, 54, 55, 61, 62, 71, 74, 77, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92,
93, 94, 95, 99, 103, 110, 113, 117, 127, 131, 149, 188, 197, 202, 281, 288, 348,
361, 382, 392, 398, 404, 405, 408, 411, 420, 424, 425, 429, 431, 437, 438, 494,
496, 535, 536, 539, 540, 541, 542, 543, 544, 545, 578, 581, 582, 583, 585
Revolutionary nature of, 411–412
Strategic genesis of, 24
Peattie, Mark, 440, 535, 536, 539, 541, 547, 548, 550, 559, 576, 577, 582, 584
Pensacola (heavy cruiser), 94, 299, 314
Perry, Adm. Matthew, 72
Phelps (destroyer), 94
Philippines, 19, 22, 39, 409, 489, 613
Pilots. See Aviators
Pineau, Roger, 437
“Point Luck”, 96
“Point Option”, 275, 546
Portland (heavy cruiser), 94, 315
Port Arthur, 403
Port Darwin, 11, 27, 113, 535, 541
Port Moresby, 10, 57, 60, 61, 63. See also Coral Sea, Battle of; See also
Operation MO
Prange, Gordon, 97, 399, 400, 436, 536, 538, 539, 540, 541, 543, 544, 545, 546,
548, 549, 550, 551, 552, 553, 554, 555, 556, 558, 559, 561, 563, 564, 565, 566,
567, 568, 569, 570, 571, 572, 573, 574, 575, 576, 577, 584
Prisoners, 288, 320, 563
Propaganda, 387
Propst, Ens. Gaylord D., 114
Proximity-fused ammunition, 423. See also Antiaircraft weapons
PT boat, 349

Quarantine. See Coverup of Midway disaster

Rabaul, 22, 31, 60, 417, 422, 423, 540
Radar, Japanese, 136, 186–187, 393, 497–498
First prototypes fitted, 136, 497
Type 21, 497
Radio homing. See “Zed Baker”
Radio silence. See Communications
Ranger (aircraft carrier), 32, 93, 537, 539
Reasons for defeat. See Defeat at Midway
Reconnaissance, 50, 51, 64, 80, 96, 98, 101, 107, 108, 126, 133, 134, 136, 156,
159, 175, 180, 184, 232, 269, 275, 288, 304, 319, 340, 361, 392, 398, 402, 410,
451, 452, 481, 483, 484, 485, 486, 541, 543, 550, 562, 564
American air assets, 110
Failure of Japanese plan, 146–148, 156, 175, 391, 397
Japanese search, afternoon, 4 June, 289–291
Plan of Kid o Butai, 107–112
Size of search area, 109, 401, 408
Two-phase searches, 108, 398
Type 97s used, 129, 159
Refueling, 78, 382–383
Reserve strike force. See Kido Butai, Reserve antishipping strike force
Ring, Lt. Cdr. Stanhope C., 174, 206, 272, 274, 364, 368, 448, 553
Ring antiaircraft formation. See Air defense
Roberts, Ens. J. Q., 234
Rodee, Lt. Cdr. Walter F., 274, 364, 448
Roosevelt, President Franklin D., 24, 40
Royal Navy, 11
Russell (destroyer), 94, 314
Russia, 44, 45, 72, 73, 403, 424, 429. See also Soviet Union Russo-Japanese
War of 1904-1905, 72, 403–404
Ry uho (aircraft carrier), 42
Ry j (aircraft carrier), 8, 46, 67, 91, 270, 392, 393, 418, 447, 449, 459, 525,
526, 527, 528, 529, 530, 532, 533, 535, 543, 559, 583, 589
 Characteristics of, 46
Ryukaku (aircraft carrier), 60. See also Shoho

Saeki, 88, 386

Sakai, PO2c Ichiro, 151
Sakiyama, Capt. Shakao, 346, 362, 368, 369, 372, 376, 377, 380, 448, 456. See
also Mikuma (heavy cruiser)
Death of, 380
Reports being sighted by PBY, 5 June, 362
Salamaua, 31, 58
Samoa, 27, 28, 29, 31, 34, 38, 40, 52, 422, 427. See also Operation MI,
anticipated follow-on operations Sand Island, 33, 48, 156
Sano, Sea1c Shinpei, 214
Santa Cruz, Battle of, 417, 422
Saratoga (aircraft carrier), 7, 32, 41, 58, 63, 86, 93, 94, 419, 422, 426, 537, 545
Damaged by submarine, and repairs to, 93
Saruwatari, Lt. Cdr. Masayushi, 348, 378, 448, 575
Orders Type 93 torpedoes jettisoned, 348
Sasabe, Cdr. Toshidaburo, 241, 242, 257, 558, 560
Sasaki, Cmdr. Akira, 29, 293, 448, 503, 507, 514, 520
SBD. See Aircraft, U.S. Scharnhorst (battleship), 491
Scouting aircraft, Japanese, 265. See also Ady, Lt. Howard P.; See also Chase,
Lt. William A.
Chikuma No. 1, 146, 164, 175, 283, 354, 401
Chikuma No. 2, 319, 339, 340
Chikuma No. 3, 339
Chikuma No. 4, 283, 311, 354, 361–362
Chikuma No. 5, 132, 210, 261, 264, 265, 266, 283, 285, 289, 292, 311
Shot down, 306
Chikuma No. 6, 132
Haruna No. 1, 306
H sh B4Y1, 355
Sights Hiry , 355
S ry D4Y, 180, 189, 210, 265, 288, 292, 323, 324
Tone No. 1, 283
Tone No. 3, 132, 306, 319, 339
Shot down, 319
Tone No. 4, 169, 170, 174, 175, 180, 183, 184, 264, 283, 306, 311, 318,
 319, 339, 401
0728 sighting, 159, 164
Ambiguity of sighting report, 164, 183, 209
Detected by TF 16, 173, 189
Encounters PBY, 148
Late launch of, 132, 175, 335, 398
Sights aircraft heading towards Kids Butai, 133
Sights TF 17, 198
Sights U.S. torpedo aircraft from TF 17, 198
Scouting aircraft, U.S., 362
Cruiser floatplanes, 368
PBY, 33, 96, 106, 134, 148, 174, 200, 213, 272, 349, 359, 362, 363,
445, 446, 502, 508, 545, 548, 549, 573, 588
Sight Invasion force, 106
Sight Kids Butai, 134
Sight Main Body, 366
Sight Mikuma and Mogami, 362
Sight Minesweeper group, 106

SBD
Sight Hiry , 308
Sight Mogami and Mikuma,6 June, 367
Scouting Eight. See VS-8
Scouting Five. See VS-5
Scouting Six. See VS-6
Screening Force (Main Body), 50
Scuttling, 333–339, 351–352, 352–353
Seaplanes, recovery of, 198
Seaplane Tender Group, 48
Second Mobile Striking Force, 46, 47, 51, 54, 91, 169, 270, 310. See also Dai-ni
Kid Butai
Attacks Dutch Harbor, 310
Receives orders to reinforce Nagumo, 4 June, 310
“Secret patients”, 386. See also Coverup of Midway disaster
Sendai (light cruiser), 50, 384, 453
Senshi Sssho, 68, 105, 111, 145, 148, 160, 164, 201, 231, 334, 347, 441, 537,
538, 539, 540, 541, 542, 543, 546, 548, 549, 550, 551, 556, 557, 558, 559, 561,
564, 565, 567, 568, 570, 572, 573, 575, 576, 583
Seo, PO1c Tetsuo, 297, 454, 521
Shannon, Col. Harold D., 97, 449, 489
Sheedy, Ens. Daniel C., 224
Shigematsu, Lt. Yasuhiro, 126, 128, 253, 262, 293, 295, 449, 507, 516, 520
Shikoku, 18
Shinano (aircraft carrier), 420, 583
Changes in design after Midway, 389
Shinkoku Maru (oiler), 77, 452
Shirane, Lt. Ayao, 126, 127, 128, 207, 324, 326, 449, 500, 501, 506, 513 “Sho
Go 1” plan, 409
Sh h (aircraft carrier), 54, 58, 63, 65, 95, 268, 418, 543
Sh kaku (aircraft carrier), 7, 10, 11, 58, 63, 64, 65, 66, 91, 94, 121, 131, 178,
209, 248, 268, 388, 390, 391, 392, 393, 410, 417, 418, 421, 422, 470, 476, 526,
538, 539, 542, 544, 548, 559, 583, 584, 585
Damage to at Battle of Coral Sea, 10, 63
Short, Lt. Wallace “Wally” 369, 370, 371, 372, 449
Sights Mogami and Mikuma, 369
Sh stai. See Formations, Air
Sh staich s. See Formations, Air
Shumway, Lt. DeWitt Wood, 324, 326, 364, 365, 449, 558
Attacks Hiry , afternoon 4 June, 326
Simard, Capt. Cyril T., 96, 114, 134, 349, 361, 363, 449
Initiates flight operations on 4 June, 134
Initiates flight operations on 5 June, 361
Orders dusk attack on burning carriers, 4 June, 349
Singapore, 3, 19, 354, 427
Sixth Fleet, 97, 101. See also Submarines Slim, Field Marshal William, 412–413
Smoke, 280, 327
Use in air defense warning, 137, 170, 205, 308
SNLF, 45, 48, 49, 67
Soji, Capt. Akira, 346, 362, 369, 371, 378, 381, 449, 456, 573. See also Mogami
(heavy cruiser) S ry (aircraft carrier), 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 18, 42, 55, 77, 78, 80,
87, 88, 90, 91, 112, 119, 120, 121, 126, 128, 130, 132, 136, 140, 143, 149, 151,
159, 166, 167, 168, 176, 179, 180, 181, 183, 184, 186, 188, 189, 192, 193, 199,
200, 201, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 210, 213, 219, 221, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227,
230, 231, 236, 237, 238, 239, 242, 248, 250, 251, 252, 253, 256, 261, 264, 265,
266, 267, 268, 276, 279, 280, 281, 282, 287, 288, 289, 292, 297, 299, 302, 304,
305, 318, 321, 322, 323, 331, 332, 333, 334, 335, 336, 339, 349, 363, 366, 386,
387, 388, 417, 418, 419, 421, 437, 446, 447, 448, 449, 451, 471, 472, 476, 477,
478, 484, 494, 495, 496, 498, 499, 505, 507, 508, 509, 510, 511, 512, 518, 519,
523, 524, 540, 541, 542, 543, 546, 547, 548, 550, 554, 555, 556, 557, 558, 559,
560, 561, 562, 563, 567, 568, 569, 571, 579, 583, 585, 587, 588, 589, 613
Abandoned, 261, 276, 279
Aircraft losses during morning attack on Midway, 204
Attacked by dive-bombers, 1020 4 June, 236–239
Attacked by VT-8, 206–209
Breakdown of fire-control, 237
Casualties, 251–252, 336, 476
Casualties among engineering staff, 280–281, 322–323
Characteristics of, 9, 470–473
Cost of, 419
Damage to, 250–252, 264
In lead of Kido Butai by 1000, 219, 224
Loses engine power, 4 June, 238, 251, 261
Scuttled, 336, 388
Southwest Pacific
Naval GHQ preferences for, 27
Strategic option, 31
Soviet Union, 23, 26, 578
Special Group (Main Body), 49
Special Naval Landing Forces, 45. See also SNLF
Spruance, Rear Admiral Raymond A., 95, 96, 134, 135, 173, 174, 217, 275, 285,
299, 330, 331, 339, 344, 348, 359, 361, 363, 364, 365, 366, 367, 368, 371, 379,
381, 397, 434, 449, 570
Actions on 5 June, 363–364
Decides to break off battle, 381–382
Desires to attack Japanese as soon as possible, 135
Heads east at dusk, 4 June, 330–331
Orders Enterprise SBDs to proceed independently, morning 4 June, 174
Personality of, 95, 344
Searches for Mogami and Mikuma, 367
Selected to command Task Force 16, 95
Sends reinforcements to Yorktown, 299
Sets 0700 launch time, 4 June, 173
Sides with aviators against Browning, 364
Situation on morning 5 June, 359–361
Staring Bay, 88
Stark, Adm. Harold R., 429
Stebbins, Lt. Edgar E., 319
Submarines
Failure of Japanese, 97–98
Japanese dispositions, 50
Substandard nature of Japanese boats, 98
U.S., 333, 359. See also Nautilus (submarine); See also Tambor
(submarine)
U.S. dispositions, 96
U.S. sighting of Invasion Force, 98
Submarine Squadron 5, 98
Sugiyama, Gen. Gen, 29, 38, 449
Sugiyama, PO1c Takeo, 221, 505, 507, 518, 519, 529
Suisei. See Aircraft, Japanese, Experimental model 13 carrier bomber
Sumatra, 22, 39
Sun Tzu, 53, 409, 539, 584
Supply Force, (Kid Butai), 106
Survivors of Midway disaster. See also Coverup of Midway disaster
Quarantined, 386
Reassigned, 386–387, 388
Threatened by kempeitai, 387
Suzuki, PO1c Kiyonobu, 207
Suzuki, Sea1c Takeshi, 312
Suzuki, WO Shigeru, 159, 207, 265, 455, 502, 503, 506, 514, 515, 516, 517,
519, 522, 523, 550, 553
Suzuya (heavy cruiser), 49, 56, 345, 346, 363, 380, 456, 488, 574
Sweeney, Lt. Col. Walter C., 178, 329, 449

Taih (aircraft carrier), 58, 390, 421, 559, 583, 585

Changes in design after Midway, 389
Taiwan, 42
Takahashi, Lt. Cdr. Hidekazu, 235
Takahashi, PO1c Toshio, 204, 290, 312, 315, 457, 502, 503, 505, 506, 507, 515,
517, 522, 525, 547, 557
Takama, RADM Tamotsu, 186, 452
Takao (heavy cruiser), 46, 67, 459, 518, 519, 532, 533
Takasago Maru (hospital ship), 386
Takashima, Cdr. Hideo, 370, 371, 375, 376, 377, 449, 505, 507
 Orders Mikuma abandoned, 375–376
Takasu, VADM Shiro, 46, 51, 54, 55, 136, 449, 454
Takezaki, PO1c Masatake, 210, 265, 289, 306, 449, 523
Tama (light cruiser), 46, 457, 460, 532, 533
Tambor (submarine), 345, 346, 348, 359, 361, 448
Sights CruDiv 7, 345
Tampo, Cdr. Yoshibumi, 259, 276, 286, 287, 449
Tamura, Lt. Cdr., 351
Tanabe, Lt. Cdr. Yahachi, 99, 204, 348, 349, 373, 374, 375, 449, 519, 574
Tanabe, PO2c Masanao, 204
Tanaka, Lt. Gen. Shinichi, 28
Tanaka, PO1c Katsumi, 146, 230
Tanaka, PO1c Yukuo, 196, 204
Tanaka, RADM Raizo, 49
Taniguchi, PO1c Masao, 184, 206, 500, 506, 553
Tanikaze (destroyer), 18, 341, 352, 361, 364, 365, 366, 383, 388, 447, 452, 573
Attacked by B-17s, 364, 366
Attacked by TF 16
aircraft, 364–365
Dispatched to locate Hiry , 361
Taranto, 86
Task Force 16, 134, 135, 173, 189, 265, 272, 289, 299, 306, 312, 314, 318, 319,
330, 340, 363, 365, 366, 367, 369, 377, 378, 382
Launches afternoon strike against Hiry , 318–319
Task Force 17, 95, 134, 135, 146, 189, 190, 264, 265, 330, 361
TBD. See Aircraft, U.S.
TBF. See Aircraft, U.S.
Tenzan. See Aircraft, Japanese
Thach, Lt. Cdr. John Smith “Jimmy”, 217, 223, 224, 226, 312, 407, 449, 555
Implements new defensive tactics, 223–224
Shoots down Lt. Tomonaga, 314
“Thach Weave”, 223, 407
Third Fleet, 392. See also Doctrine
Formation of after Midway, 391
Toba, PO1c Shigenobu, 200
Togo, Adm. Heihachiro, 12, 24
Toho Maru (oiler), 77, 452
Tojo, Gen. Hideki, 385, 389, 439, 449
Reaction to Midway disaster, 439
Tokaki, 120, 131, 157, 158, 545, 549. See also Aircraft carriers, Japanese,
arming aircraft Tomioka, Capt. Sadatoshi, 27, 28, 29, 34, 36, 37, 38, 43, 449,
537
Tomitaka, 88
Tomonaga, Lt. Joichi, 125, 126, 128, 129, 145, 146, 149, 153, 159, 165, 166,
168, 170, 173, 174, 181, 184, 188, 196, 200, 202, 253, 283, 288, 290, 292, 298,
306, 308, 310, 311, 312, 314, 316, 449, 451, 504, 513, 517, 521, 522, 524, 550,
553, 564
Attack on Yorktown, 311–318
Commands afternoon attack, 290
Commands morning attack, 125
Damage to plane, 200
Death of, 314
Morning strike returns to Kido Butai, 181–182
Requests second strike on Midway, 149
Results of morning strike against Midway, 199–204
Tone (heavy cruiser), 12, 18, 100, 107, 108, 113, 132, 133, 144, 146, 148, 152,
159, 160, 161, 164, 169, 170, 173, 174, 175, 180, 183, 184, 189, 192, 198, 205,
209, 210, 226, 264, 265, 267, 283, 285, 288, 289, 306, 308, 311, 319, 320, 324,
329, 335, 339, 392, 398, 400, 401, 432, 446, 451, 479, 485, 486, 523, 532, 536,
544, 545, 547, 548, 551, 564
Aircraft complement, 18, 108
Communications facilities, 100
Late launch of afternoon reconnaissance flight, 306
Late launch of morning reconnaissance flight, 132–133
Tone No. 3. See Scouting aircraft, Japanese
Tone No. 4. See Scouting aircraft, Japanese
Tonga, 427
Torpedoes, 130–131. See also Type 91 torpedo, Type 93 torpedo
Maintenance of, 130
Running depth of, 130, 332
Torpedo boats, 49
Torpedo Eight. See VT-8
Torpedo Six. See VT-6
Torpedo Three. See VT-3
Toyoda, Adm. Soemu, 409
Toyoshima, Cdr. Shunichi, 333, 335, 449, 452
Traffic analysis, 60. See also Intelligence, U.S.
Training. See Imperial Japanese Navy, Aviation, Training
Trincomalee, 11, 113
Truk, 3, 22, 27, 32, 51, 52, 56, 58, 60, 99, 101, 393, 423, 540, 580
Destruction of, 423
Tsuchiya, PO2c Takayoshi, 295, 296, 514, 520
Tsuchiya, Sea3C Ryosaku, 18
Tsushima, Battle of, 72, 73, 403, 404, 408, 409, 411, 414, 415, 420, 428
Casualties, 403
Negative effects on Japanese naval thought, 72, 403–404, 409, 414
Signifigance of, 73
Tucker, Lt. Alfred B. III, 272, 274
Tyler, Capt. Marshall “Zack”, 362
Type 80 800-kg land-attack bomb, 119, 120, 157
Type 91 director, 138, 140. See also Fire control Type 91 torpedo, 80, 120, 124,
130, 140, 234, 235, 349, 463, 466, 467, 477, 478, 539, 545, 547, 548, 549, 553,
567, 570
Type 93 torpedo, 18, 332, 351, 353, 368, 371
Characteristics of, 348
Type 94 director, 138, 140, 237. See also Fire control Type 95 director, 142. See
also Fire control
Type 96 25-mm antiaircraft gun, 142–143
Type 98 No. 25 242-kg. land attack bomb, 123, 203, 205, 262, 295
Used for flak suppression, 295
Type 99 No. 25 250-kg. common bomb, 197, 205, 262, 296, 297

U.S. Navy, 39–40

Air strength prior to the battle, 433
Assumes burden of defense of Pacific theater, 39
Carrier forces, 42, 58
Embraces aircraft carrier after Pearl Harbor, 39, 51
Flexibility of airgroup organization, 94
Japanese appraisal of morale, 50, 53
Lack of experience in coordinated carrier operations, 95, 173, 174
Logistics capabilities of, 423
Losses suffered during morning attacks, 4 June, 274–275
Quality of naval air forces, 65, 152, 178, 200
Superior ability to learn, 407
Tactical situation after 1020 attack, 271–272, 275–276
Transforms nature of carrier warfare by mid-1943, 423
U.S. Navy Oceanographic Office, 491
Ugaki, Adm. Matome, 24
1655 communique, 320
Diagnoses reasons for Japanese failure, 398
Has doubts about Nagumo’s command of battle, 341
Low opinion of Nagumo, 13, 17, 342
Role as war games umpire, 61, 62, 410
Uniforms, 117
United States of America
Ability to transform scope of Pacific War, 415
Economic strength of, 428
Guarantees defense of Australia, 40
Inevitability of eventual victory over Japan, 429–430
Long-term strategic position prior to Midway, 428
Public support of war, 429–430
Strategic situation of in early 1942, 39–40

Unryu (aircraft carrier), 389, 421, 476, 559, 583, 585

Urakaze (destroyer), 18, 452, 533
Uranami (destroyer), 384, 388, 453, 518, 519
Ushio (destroyer), 67, 460, 518, 519, 532, 533
Utsumi, Cdr. Hachiro, 300

VB-3, 217, 225, 226, 227, 275, 324, 365, 369

VB-6, 216, 228, 324, 365, 369
VB-8, 206, 272, 367
VF-3, 217
VF-42, 94
VF-8, 275
“Victory Disease”, 67, 398. See also Defeat at Midway Vincennes (heavy
cruiser), 94, 299
Vireo (minesweeper), 361, 372, 373, 374, 375
Vladivostok, 403
VMSB-241, 176, 185, 349, 362
VS-5, 94, 225, 275, 308, 365, 367, 369
VS-6, 216, 228, 275, 319, 324, 365, 367, 369
VS-8, 206, 274, 367
VT-3, 217, 230, 236, 288
Attacks Hiry , 255
Attacks Kids Butai, 221–225
Attacks Hiry , 242
Attacks nearly simultaneously with dive-bombers, 221
Losses on 4 June, 275
VT-5, 94
VT-6, 210, 211, 216, 217, 219, 221, 223, 369
Attacks Kids Butai, 211–214
Losses on 4 June, 274
VT-8, 206, 211, 213, 216, 217, 272
Attacks Kids Butai, 206

Wake Island, 11, 48, 382, 383

Waldron, Lt. Cdr. John C., 206, 207, 209, 272, 274, 449, 553
Leaves Hornet air group, 206
Ware, Lt. Charles R., 275, 293, 449, 511
War games, 410. See also Operation MI, war games
Washington Naval Treaty, 23, 75
Japanese resentment of, 75
Wasp (aircraft carrier), 32, 41, 57, 64, 66, 93, 419, 422, 426
Watanabe, Cdr. Yasamusa, 199
Watanabe, Cdr. Yasuji, 34, 36, 44, 210, 344, 344–345, 353, 449, 452, 515, 516,
518, 519, 525, 537, 538, 563, 564, 570
Weather, 3, 5, 45, 65, 71, 91, 104, 106, 109, 110, 114, 119, 123, 125, 146, 148,
169, 175, 190, 200, 226, 235, 309, 310, 349, 354, 355, 365, 408, 421, 544, 552,
580
During transit, 104
Effects on combat operations, 180
Effects on flight operations, 135, 190, 198
Effects on reconnaissance, 109, 110
Effects on sighting aircraft, 209, 226
Weber, Ens. Frederick T., 239, 326
Wildcat. See Aircraft, U.S.
Willmott, H. P., 421, 428, 536, 537, 538, 539, 540, 541, 542, 543, 544, 546, 550,
551, 572, 576, 577, 578, 585
Worden (destroyer), 94
Wotje, 50, 459
Yamada, Lt. Shohei, 126, 127, 449, 454, 461, 514, 517, 520
Yamaguchi, Ens. Hiroyuki, 183, 184
Yamaguchi, RADM Tamon, 10, 16, 17, 19, 77, 128, 130, 132, 151, 167, 188,
189, 232, 252, 253, 262, 264, 265, 266, 267, 269, 270, 271, 275, 283, 284, 285,
288, 289, 290, 292, 297, 298, 306, 308, 309, 310, 311, 318, 320, 323, 342, 349,
350, 351, 364, 401, 412, 413, 437, 438, 442, 449, 451, 494, 495, 502, 503, 506,
516, 520, 525, 528, 530, 536, 552, 554, 555, 556, 564, 580, 584
Advises Nagumo to launch attack force, 188
Aggressiveness of, 269, 270, 288
Death of, 351
Launches Kobayashi counterstrike, 263, 265
Learns of three American carriers, 288
Orders Hiry scuttled, 351
Personality of, 16, 271
Plans dusk carrier attack, 310, 318, 323
Reacts to 1020 attack, 252
Yamamoto, Adm. Isoroku, 5, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 29, 32, 33,
34, 35, 36, 37, 43, 44, 45, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62, 63,
64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 75, 77, 85, 98, 103, 113, 126, 151, 152, 156, 169, 184, 198,
206, 216, 261, 262, 266, 268, 270, 284, 290, 312, 315, 318, 320, 321, 331, 341,
342, 343, 344, 345, 349, 353, 354, 355, 359, 361, 366, 369, 371, 372, 375, 382,
383, 384, 386, 388, 389, 391, 399, 401, 402, 405, 406, 408, 409, 410, 411, 413,
431, 433, 435, 437, 438, 442, 449, 453, 488, 502, 503, 504, 506, 507, 514, 519,
521, 526, 528, 530, 531, 536, 537, 553, 566, 569, 581
1220 communique, 4 June, 284
1915 communique, 4 June, 341–342
Attempts to resume battle on 6 June, 382–383
Authorizes invasions of Attu and Kiska, 5 June, 355
Cancels invasion of Midway, 344–345
Favors operations in Central Pacific, 28, 32, 34
Flaws as a commander, 53–55, 408
Has doubts about Nagumo’s command of battle, 341
Orders Akagi scuttled, 353
Orders Nagumo to attack Americans at night, 342
Orders scuttling of Akagi be delayed, 340
Orders second strike kept in reserve, 63, 153–156, 410
Personality of, 22–24, 36, 62
Reaction to Doolittle raid, 43
Reacts to American sighting report, 198
 Reacts to news of 1020 attack, 262
Relieves Nagumo of command, 342–343
Retained in command after Midway disaster, 388
Seeks to create surface engagement, June 5-6, 366
Strategic vision regarding Midway, 33–34
Threatens resignation over strategic policymaking, 24, 36
Tries to restore situation on 5 June, 354–355
Wins battle over strategic policymaking, 34–37
Yamamoto, Cdr. Yuji, 34
Yamamoto, PO1c Akira, 184, 206, 315
Yamamoto, PO2c Toru, 151, 315
Yamashiro (battleship), 46, 454
Yamato (battleship), 5, 30, 34, 36, 49, 55, 61, 62, 64, 67, 68, 73, 85, 97, 99, 101,
102, 262, 270, 320, 321, 341, 342, 344, 345, 352, 354, 355, 361, 369, 382, 383,
386, 389, 391, 397, 398, 399, 404, 405, 410, 453, 491, 575, 584
Yamazaki, RADM Shigeaki, 46, 234, 449, 461
Yanagimoto, Capt. Ryusaku, 9, 10, 252, 261, 282, 321, 449, 451, 517, 522, 563.
See also S ry (aircraft carrier)
Death of, 282
Orders S ry abandoned, 261, 279
Yokosuka, 8, 42, 49, 80, 167, 386, 407, 466, 471, 483, 484, 545, 548
Yokosuka Air Group, 103
Yokosuka D4Y1. See Aircraft, Japanese, Experimental model 13 carrier bomber
Yorktown (aircraft carrier), 31, 32, 42, 61, 63, 66, 86, 92, 93, 94, 95, 134, 162,
169, 175, 189, 190, 198, 217, 219, 221, 225, 226, 231, 251, 264, 265, 275, 288,
289, 292, 293, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299, 308, 312, 313, 314, 316, 317, 318, 326,
330, 361, 362, 369, 372, 373, 374, 375, 383, 407, 419, 421, 434, 446, 449, 491,
511, 520, 521, 541, 543, 544, 548, 551, 559, 561, 562, 563, 564, 566, 574, 575
Abandoned, 318
Damaged by I-168, 374–375
Damaged by Kobayashi strike, 297, 298–299
Damaged by Tomonaga strike, 316–318
Damage control aboard, 312, 372–373
Detects Kobayashi strike on radar, 293
Detects Tomonaga strike on radar, 312
Launches morning reconnaissance flights, 134
Launches morning strike, 189
Repairs to, 66, 94
Sinks, 383
 Superior coordination of morning strike, 189, 217
Yoshida, Cdr. Masayoshi, 341
Yoshino, WO Haruo, 126, 183, 232, 234, 236, 304, 337, 449, 493, 523, 549,
550, 551, 556, 557, 560, 565, 568, 569
Yoshioka, Lt. Cdr. Chuichi, 386
Yubari (light cruiser), 184, 185
Yugumo (destroyer), 18, 332, 339, 341, 452, 532, 569
Yura (light cruiser), 49, 455

“Zed Baker”, 272, 274

Zengun totsugeki!, 306
Zuih (aircraft carrier), 46, 47, 49, 58, 91, 284, 366, 372, 382, 418, 419, 422,
455, 532, 533, 543, 574, 579, 583
Zuikaku (aircraft carrier), 7, 10, 11, 47, 58, 63, 64, 65, 66, 94, 131, 170, 209,
388, 391, 392, 393, 410, 417, 418, 421, 422, 533, 538, 542, 548, 551, 559, 580,
583, 585
Damage to at Battle of Coral Sea, 10, 63
About the Authors

Jonathan Parshall’s interest in the Imperial Japanese Navy developed in
childhood. He has written for the U.S. Naval War College Review, Naval
Institute Proceedings, and World War II magazine, and has contributed to
several books on the topic. In 1995 Jon founded www.combinedfleet.com, the
foremost Internet site on the Imperial Navy, which currently attracts more than
50,000 visitors monthly. He was a consultant to the 1999 expedition by Nauticos
Corporation and the Naval Oceanographic Office that discovered wreckage from
the carrier Kaga, sunk at Midway. A graduate of Carleton College and the
Carlson School of Management, he works in senior management for a Minnesota
software company. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife Margaret, children,
Anna and Derek, and cats Hiry and S ry .
Anthony Tully’s interest in the Imperial Japanese Navy is long-standing
and wide-ranging. Like coauthor Jon, his interest began in childhood, and his
interest in Midway, in particular, was inspired by Walter Lord’s Incredible
Victory and its careful attempts to reconstruct events. This attention to detail
mentored the pattern of all of Tony’s subsequent art and writing. A frequent
contributor to journals and periodicals on matters both nautical and topical, Tony
has been published in the U.S. Naval War College Review Naval Institute
Proceedings, Naval History, Warship International, the Dallas Morning News,
Today’s Christian Man, and Kudzu magazine. Likewise a consultant to the 1999
Nauticos/NAVO expedition, he has been an adviser to other undersea
expeditions researching naval battle sites in the Philippines and elsewhere. Since
1996 Tony has been a major contributor to www.combinedfleet.com and other
online resources on the Imperial Navy. A graduate of Texas Tech University,
with extensive postgraduate studies, Tony works in the information technology
and support field. He lives in Dallas, Texas.

Visit the authors at: www.shatteredswordbook.com