Midway: Five Minutes
By David H. Lippman
March 2008

With Kaga Capt. Jisaku Okada and the bridge crew dead, Air Officer Cdr. Takahisa Amagai may wish to vanish like the dew after inheriting command of a blazing 38,000-ton aircraft carrier. At least four bombs hit Kaga, probably more.

The last American down is Ens. George Goldsmith, who roars straight down to 1,500 feet. Goldsmith is a horrible pilot in practice and so he amazes his back-seater, Radioman James Patterson, with an accurate hit on the flight deck amidships.

Above, Jimmy Thach sees the dive-bombers attack, and it looks like “a beautiful silver waterfall” to him. He watches the bombers bore in, and the explosions from above.

A junior officer poses with a 20mm gun on USS Yorktown on the morning of 4 June 1942.

On Akagi, civilian newsman Teiichi Makishima discovers he’s out of film. He runs into the chartroom to swap out cartridges. Meanwhile, Akagi, having launched her first Zero, comes under Dick Best and the five planes of Bombing 6’s first division. Everyone on the flagship is watching the launch instead of the sky, or watching the last TBDs fleeing. Best orders his team, “Don’t let this carrier escape.” Best opens his flaps and streaks down. He is fascinated by Akagi’s yellow flight deck and the red circle painted on its deck. He aims his three-power telescope at his target, a point just ahead of the bridge. At 3,000 feet, he sees Akagi’s lead Zero take off, and keeps boring in.

Just as Cdr. Shogo Masuda, the air officer, swings his flag, a lookout screams, “Hell-divers!” Cdr. Mitsuo Fuchida glances up to see three of Best’s bombers racing in, straight for the bridge. Best, Lt. j.g. Bud Kroeger, and Ens. Fred Weber are all diving on Akagi.

Fuchida crawls behind a protective mantle. Makishima aims his camera on the three incoming SBDs, and suddenly realizes they are heading for him. Then he hits the deck. Kroeger dives in closer and closer, and releases his 1,000-pound bomb at 2,500 feet. He pulls back tightly, convinced that his bomb has hit and the carrier has a starboard island.

Actually the bomb is a near-miss, just off the port bow, and its splashes into the sea, soaking everyone on the bridge, blackening their faces. The blast makes Akagi shudder. Adm. Chuichi Nagumo, his air officer Cdr. Minoru Genda, and the rest are surprised, but not scared. Cdr. Sasabe, the fleet navigator, looks at the water column, and thinks he sees his mother’s face. However, Best’s bomb, the second, hits directly near the midship elevator, and shreds the lift into twisted metal. The lift drops into the hangar. So does the bomb, which explodes in the hangar deck, setting off bombs, planes, and torpedoes. Among the ordnance going off are the 800-kilo contact bombs Masuda’s crew left lying around in the endless swap-outs. These bombs explode, setting off more blasts. The explosion sends flames through the empty elevator well, and sets the flight deck ablaze. “Fatal hit. Several holes,” Akagi’s damage chart notes blandly.

Weber’s bomb, the third, hits Akagi’s stern, ripping apart the flight deck and the readied aircraft. It plunges through the hull and jams the carrier’s rudder. Then, silence, as Best’s planes pull out. He sees the undamaged Hiryu in the distance, fighting off the last of VT-3’s TBDs. The roar of engines and whine of bombs is replaced by the crackle of fire. Genda, who has been watching Kaga, thinks, “Akagi has been hit, too. What a pity! We must not be downed, as we still have the Second Carrier Division.” Fuchida’s reaction is more emotional. He starts to cry.

On Soryu, Cdr. Hisashi Ohara stands on the navigation bridge, riveted by Kaga’s struggle. Then one of his lookouts yells, “Enemy dive-bombers! Hole in the clouds!” Ohara looks up to see a dozen planes diving on his ship. A minute later the first bomb hits the port side of the flight deck, between elevators. The second hits right in front of the bridge, and knocks Ohara of his feet and back down the flight deck. He doesn’t feel hurt; it’s just like being in a steam bath. When he staggers to his feet, people start tossing towels on his face to handle the burns. That bomb explodes in the hangar deck. The third bomb hits aft near the Number Three elevator, and explodes more aircraft.

Up above, Jimmy Thach sees pink and blue flames rise from the three carriers. It’s time to go. He streaks back to Yorktown, and feels liquid all over his leg. He thinks its blood. Then he picks up his glove and sees it’s covered with oil. His line has been hit, causing the liquid. It’s one occasion he’s happy to see oil all over the floor. His squadron mate, Lt. Sheedy, has less luck. Short of fuel, he crash-lands on Hornet without cutting off his machine-guns. The impact sprays across the flight deck and island, killing five men and wounding 20 others. Among the dead is Lt. Royal R. Ingersoll II, son of Adm. Royal Ingersoll, commander-in-chief of the Atlantic Fleet. The elder Ingersoll told his son after Pearl Harbor that “now that war had been declared, no regular officer could possibly consider a shore assignment; he must ask for a job at sea.” The son has heeded those words, and now pays the price.

With Soryu burning, Yorktown’s last planes attack her screening destroyer, Isokaze, mistaking it for a light cruiser. They score no hits, and start pulling out. Amazingly, Yorktown’s group does not lose any planes. But oil starts splattering all over Lt. j.g. Paul Holmberg’s cockpit. He asks AMM2 G.A. La Plant, a mechanic by trade, what’s happening. La Plant says that if the dials are all right, he has lost hydraulic pressure. Sure enough, shrapnel or flak has ripped up his hydraulic fluid, and he and his buddies streak back to Yorktown. The carrier’s air group has had the most successful attack of the three. It is an irony that the surviving pilots will believe — to their annoyance — that they sank a light carrier weighing 10,000 tons, thus achieving the least of the three attacks. Actually, Soryu displaces 18,800 tons, making her only 1,200 tons smaller than Yorktown.

	USS Enterprise during the Battle of Midway, 4 June 1942.

Enterprise’s air group is less lucky. The Zero pilots, having seen three of their carriers get bombed, are enraged. Two Zeros pounce on Cdr. Wade McClusky. Every time one dives, McClusky turns toward it, hoping that gunner W.G. Chochalousek can open fire. The Japanese score first by shooting up McClusky’s cockpit, wounding him in the left arm. McClusky expects to die. Then the gunfire stops and he’s still flying. Despite an injured shoulder, McClusky turns back to see Chochalousek unharmed. He’s shot down one Zero and scared off the other. The plane, however, has taken 55 hits.

Ensign Pittman also faces Japanese attack, and his gunner, F.D. Adkins, faces an odd challenge: His twin .30 caliber machine-guns break loose from their mount. Adkins grabs onto it and holds it in place, somehow shooting down a Zero. The machine guns weigh 175 pounds. However, not all of Enterprise’s planes make it back. She loses 14 SBDs, most of them those that have to ditch for lack of gas.

All morning long, Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto and his staff await developments. As the Americans attack and fail, they listen in on Nagumo’s tactical radio transmissions. Cdr. Yasuji Watanabe remarks, “It all turned out just as we wanted.”

At 10:30 the radio room reports overhearing a message from Nagumo, “The Akagi is on fire!” Watanabe rushes to the battle command post and hands the message to Yamamoto. The latter asks Kuroshima if it might be wise to confirm that the carriers have actually attacked the American fleet. Of course, Kuroshima says, the attack has been launched. It’s all in his plan.

More messages come up … fire on the Kaga, then the Soryu. Nobody worries yet. Ships get hit in action. That’s war.

The second phase of the Battle of Midway is over. It has lasted five minutes. Three of Japan’s largest and most powerful aircraft carriers now lie as blasted wrecks. Nobody knows it — the American pilots are trying to make it home and the Japanese crews are trying to save lives and ships — but the tide of World War II in the Pacific has turned. In five minutes.

Kaga, Akagi and Soryu burn during the Battle of Midway.

On the three blasted carriers, however, nobody is immediately concerned with the historic implications of the battle. Right now it is a grim struggle to save men and ships. More than 200 men have been flung overboard from Akagi, and Masuda races around, trying to get his crewmen undercover. “Anybody who isn’t working, get below!” he yells.

Fuchida hobbles down to the briefing room, joined by Makishima, to find it set up as an emergency hospital. He asks why the badly burned men haven’t been taken to sick bay, and an attendant tells him all the lower decks, including sickbay, are on fire. Stunned, Fuchida realizes that if he had stayed in his sickbay bed, he’d be dead now. Fuchida and Makishima shuffle back to the flag bridge to find Genda, who glances at Fuchida and says, “Shimatta.” In English, “We goofed.”

Nearby, Rear Adm. Kusaka, the chief of staff, takes in reports from damage control parties. Radio is out, steering is out, all guns but three are out, and the carbon dioxide extinguishers cannot keep up with the fires. Flooding of ammunition magazines isn’t working, either. Akagi’s rudder is jammed at port 20, and she is drifting in circles. Damage control officer Cdr. Dobashi, however, has taken one measure appropriate to the mess: He’s buckled on his samurai sword. If he can’t save the ship, he’ll go down in the best traditions.

Akagi navigator Miura rings the telegraph to stop engines, but there’s no response. He sends a messenger down to the engine room to find everyone there has been suffocated by smoke sucked down the vents. The engines are running by themselves. At 10:42, Miura tells the boiler room to draw the fires and stop the ship. A minute later, a Zero near the bridge explodes, and the fire starts crackling toward the bridge.

Kusaka, methodical as ever, realizes that Akagi is out of a job, and the flag staff has to find a new home. He urges Nagumo to transfer the flag. “It’s not time yet,” Nagumo says, standing near the compass.

Captain Tajiro Aoki, Akagi’s skipper and Kusaka’s Eta Jima classmate, joins the two, tears in his eyes. “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 this force may be continued.” Nagumo refuses.

Kusaka tries again. “You are commander-in-chief of the First Carrier Striking Force as well as the Akagi. It’s your duty to carry on the battle.” Long silence. Then Nagumo nods his head. Kusaka semaphores the destroyer Nowake to move in and send a boat. Flag Secretary Commander Nishibayashi looks for a ladder out of the bridge, but all are burning. The enlisted men punch holes in the bridge windows at 10:46 and hurl lines out. Nagumo is first out. A judo expert, he easily lands on the flight deck. The fatter Kusaka gets jammed in his window, and needs a few pushes before landing on the burning flight deck, spraining both ankles and losing his left shoe. He hops across the deck, burning his left foot, and goes down to the anchor deck, where a rope ladder waits to take the staff to Nowake.

Last man down is Fuchida, who sees his rope smoldering. One of the explosions rending Akagi hurls him in the air and smacks him on the flight deck. Fuchida breaks both legs in the ankle, and cannot move. His uniform starts to smolder as flame advances toward him. He figures it’s the end. But two enlisted men grab Fuchida and swing him in a net onto Nagumo’s lifeboat.

Another person climbing into Nagumo’s lifeboat is Genda, who suffers a burned hand. A petty officer gives his gloves to Genda, saying, “Air Staff Officer, please use this.” At that moment, Genda’s batman turns up to give his boss his bank deposit book. Genda is touched by the batman’s devotion, even though Genda’s savings are not vast.

All hands plop into Nowaki’s launch. Cdr. Chuichi Yoshioka feels as if he’s left his heart back on Akagi, Japan’s first heavy carrier, a floating symbol of Imperial prowess. The launch plows through the water to the light cruiser Nagara, flagship of Destroyer Squadron 10, the carrier group’s escorts. At 11:30, Nagumo and his staff clamber aboard Nagara, and Rear Adm. Susumu Kimura is on the quarterdeck to greet them.

“Kimura, do you think the Nagara could tow the Akagi?” Nagumo says immediately.

“It may be difficult, in view of the actual circumstances of the Akagi.” While Nagumo digests this, Kusaka heads up to the bridge to break out a vice admiral’s flag for his boss. Despite the catastrophe, protocol must be observed. However, Nagara has no vice admiral’s flags. So Kusaka takes Kimura’s own rear admiral’s flag, which shows the familiar red sun with rays, and red strips across the top and bottom. Kusaka tears off the bottom strip — vice admirals have only one strip at the top — and hoists the tattered flag up the foremast.

Disaster reigns on Soryu as well. Capt. Ryusaku Yanagimoto stands on the signal tower on the bridge’s starboard side, yelling at the men to save themselves. The heat is unbelievable: It warps doors and drives survivors out of the hangar deck onto the flight deck. On the anchor deck, overworked medics give shots to the injured and bandage the bleeding. The agony is made worse by the Japanese sailors’ uniforms, consisting of T-shirts and shorts. With such light covering, Japanese sailors are easily exposed to burns. In contrast, American sailors wear long-sleeved blue shirts and dungaree trousers, which are more resistant to heat.

Those beyond hope are left to die. An explosion sends many officers on the forward deck — including Ohara, who has fainted from his burns — into the drink. When Ohara comes to, he’s floating in the water, a corpsman slapping his face to keep him awake.

At 10:40, the engines stop, Soryu in flames. The fire hits the starboard torpedo room, setting off more explosions. At 10:45, Yanagimoto, himself injured, faces facts: main engines stopped, steering gone, fire mains gone. With the tin cans Hamakaze and Isokaze hovering nearby, he orders, “Abandon ship.”

CPO Juzo Mori and a bunch of other pilots are trapped in the ready room. Some of the men jump. But Mori times it right, and grabs the fall of an empty davit, hoping to lower himself into the water. Instead, he shoots straight down. He splashes into the water next to an upside down boat, and he and some other men struggle to flip it over.

Kaga is also a mess. Cdr. Amagai is running the firefighting efforts from air command post, but the fire is winning. He evacuates it and leads a fire team down to a lower deck to organize things. But he can’t get down to the hangar deck, because huge explosions are hurling men and debris out of the carrier. Chief Warrant Officer Takayoshi Morinaga, on the scene, is already finding things hopeless: The water mains are busted and the bucket brigade from the heads can’t keep up. He orders all combustibles hurled overboard, which is a good idea, but doesn’t help much.

Defeated, Morinaga finds himself cornered on a small open deck near the bridge, with one-way out, down the canvas of a cutter lashed to the ship. He struggles down and reaches the deck below, finding Amagai. The air officer now has to wrestle with the decision to abandon ship.

Another Japanese officer facing a big decision at 10:30 is Rear Adm. Hiroaki Abe, second-in-command of the First Carrier Striking Force, who inherits command of the force while Nagumo shifts his flag. Abe has to avenge the defeat. He wastes no time. From his flagship, Tone, he signals Hiryu, “Attack enemy carriers.” The massive airstrikes have clobbered three Japanese carriers, but Hiryu, 10,000 yards ahead, remains untouched. Her exec, Cdr. Kanoe, watches the fires and smoke, and becomes disheartened, saying, “What will become of us?”

The answer is quick, with Yamaguchi blinkering back at 10:50: “All our planes are taking off now for the purpose of destroying the enemy carriers.” Everyone on Yamaguchi’s staff is disheartened and discouraged, except the fiery Yamaguchi, who sees the situation as an opportunity to excel — and boost his reputation over that of his rival, Nagumo.

Yamaguchi tells his staff, “Well, we, with Hiryu alone, are going to sacrifice ourselves to kill the damned enemy force.” He picks up the 1MC, and tells the entire crew that it is “Now up to the Hiryu to carry on the fight for the glory of greater Japan.”

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