PECULIARLY PETE

Mid-morning April 9th, 1942. On the hastily converted racecourse-cum-airfield in the middle of Colombo, Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka), the men of 11 squadron, RAF, paced around nervously, their flying kit somewhat warm for the sticky climate, not helped by the yellow Mae West life jackets around their upper bodies. Perhaps, some may have reflected, they would be needing them soon.

The still-young day had been dramatic already; the fighter squadrons at the base had already been scrambled to intercept a Japanese raid, and all concerned can only too painfully have been aware of the presence of enemy aircraft carriers that the Royal Navy had, to date, completely failed to stop. The clock ticked.

It is very tempting now to look back and see the Second World War as a foregone conclusion; the resources of the allied nations being far superior to those of the axis; and while this does have tremendous value for batting away conspiracy theorists on the 21st century internet, it does not give a sense of the feeling at the time. To give you that sense, let us consider what was happening to this point in that year, of that war.

There were some reasons for optimism at the start of the year; the Germans had failed to take Moscow, and their armies had in fact nearly been destroyed at its gates. The flip side of course, was that they were still there and precious little progress had been made by the Red Army; the Luftwaffe seemed perfectly capable of supplying the few German troops who had been trapped and there was no prospect of direct help from the western allies.

In the west again there were limited reasons for optimism. The entry of the United States into the war promised great industrial capacity, as well as scores of troops, tanks, aeroplanes, ships and all the other necessities of war. Unfortunately, it was going to be some time before those arrived, and there was the small matter of an overall allied strategy to piece together.

British eyes are ever turned on the sea; as an island it is essential to have good sea lines of communication, and on this front things seemed to be going from bad to worse. In this respect, the USA entering the war had been a profound disadvantage; US waters were now fair game for U-Boats, and as if that was not bad enough, coastal cities had absolutely no intention of introducing a blackout, perfectly silhouetting merchant shipping at night. Targets were easy, so much so that the U-Boat commanders began calling it the “Second Happy Time” (the first was much earlier, before the Royal Navy had really got their act together); losses had shot up from 28 ships lost in December 1941, to 66 in January 1942, and the losses continued to mount; in March, 99 ships were lost.

And then in February, the German battleships Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen (of Bismarck-accompanying fame) had done something that should have been absolutely suicidal; slipping through the English channel into the North Sea; and survived. That the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force should have failed to do more than scratch the paint on the German ships was so incomprehensible that Winston Churchill had telephoned the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Alan Brooke, and simply asked “WHY?!” before slamming the phone down. 

These days most people remember Churchill as an adored wartime leader, but in these dark times, there were mutterings of discontent. Britain had been at war now for almost 3 years, and in that time, things had only seemed to get worse. It is natural that the buck stops at the top, especially for this kind of poor performance, and many of Churchill’s more optimistic pronouncements now seemed to be merely bluster; he had resoundingly won a vote of confidence in January, but worse was to come.

For the RAF generally it had been a difficult time. Having narrowly survived the Battle of Britain, the RAF had failed to stop the nighttime blitz on British cities, and even in the daytime had struggled to make much impression on the Luftwaffe in France. Worse still, a new fighter, the Fw190, had appeared in the skies over Northern France and proved superior to any RAF fighter of the day; the attempts to up-engine the Spitfire would have to wait several more months to see service.

Since the very start of the war, Bomber Command had been doing its best to make life difficult for Germany. It had very quickly become obvious that daylight raids by unescorted bombers was pure folly; total losses of every single aircraft on the raid were by no means unheard of, putting the lie to the pre-war assertion that “the bomber will always get through”. Nevertheless, the RAF had turned to night bombing, something they glamorised in films like Target for Tonight, and it had seemed initially that (according to the crews at least) things were going well.

To test this assertion, aerial photographs were taken (involving great risk to pilots flying unarmed aircraft deep into Germany), and what they discovered was… very little. Most targets showed little damage, with a wide spread of bomb craters nowhere near anything important; some targets did not appear to have been hit at all. Analysis carried out for the Butt Report (yes really, no sniggering at the back) suggested that even among aircraft that reported attacking the target, only one in three got within five miles. This caused a great deal of squabbling among the top brass; Bomber Command badly needed to sort itself out before it could be effective.

In the deserts of North Africa, there were better developments; by January 1942, the 8th army had pushed into Libya; but again, these were highly tempered; Allied air and naval forces on Malta had failed to cut off Axis supply lines from Italy to the front (and were in fact now coming under considerable attack themselves), and additional German forces were arriving under their soon-to-be-famous commander Erwin Rommel. Almost immediately they began to make ground, not helped by the distraction of a pro-German coup in Iraq (which 11 squadron had seen first hand, shortly before being transferred to the far east).

Back on the home front, rationing was really beginning to bite; clothing shortages as pre-war stocks ran out had led to them being rationed on the 1st June 1941, and by March 1942, petrol for private motoring had been banned altogether. Coal had also started to be rationed, the Fuel and Lighting Order having come into force in January. Colombo was indeed a long way from home, but every single one of the men of 11 squadron would have known someone at home who would be just that little bit thinner, more poorly clothed, and colder than before.

As the men arose that morning in the tropical humidity, gazing out upon their hastily converted airfield, they may have reflected that the situation they were now involved in showed no more signs of optimism than any of the other theatres; Pearl Harbour is well known, but the situation since was no bed of roses, even when it was known the Japanese were coming. In short succession, the bulk of what had been the Dutch East Indies (now mostly Indonesia) had fallen to the Japanese, causing the complete collapse of the ABDA (American, British, Dutch, Australian) command, making it the shortest-lived of all Allied joint commands for the entire war. A guerrilla campaign was still ongoing for the island of Timor, but the British were unable to offer assistance owing to their own problems. 

What of the Royal Navy? Stretched thin by a global war with commitments in the Atlantic, Arctic, Mediterranean and now Pacific and Indian Oceans, it had simply not the resources to contend with the far less widely spread Imperial Japanese Navy. The IJN had a much better understanding of the use of aircraft (both from land bases and carriers), and they had used this very early on (the 10th December) to send the Battleship Prince of Wales and the Battlecruiser Repulse to the bottom long before either ship was in a position to do anything. Even in more conventional surface actions there was little the RN’s eastern fleet could do to stem the tide, and they were compelled to retreat from the area.

On land, Malaya had fallen swiftly to Japanese forces, attacking what were under-equipped forces who, having been given the rather racist impression that the Japanese were a backward people, were now faced with an extremely aggressive, ruthless enemy who controlled the skies with machinery superior to their own. “Fortress” Singapore had clung on a little longer but despite attempts to reinforce it had fallen by the end of February, the single largest surrender in British Army history, and certainly a great embarrassment for a colonial power who had been just 4 months earlier the envy of the world. 

Japanese forces had also stormed into Burma and cut the Burma road, denying the Allies a direct ground supply route to the Chinese Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek. Not only was this a bitter blow to the only power that had been continuously fighting the Japanese before 1941 (and by far the largest land power opposing them), but it was an emotional blow to the fledgling United Nations as they struggled to coordinate a successful war.

A quick note for the modern audience; it is tempting to view the Japanese takeover in these areas as one colonial power replacing another, and thus for the native population, a neutral affair. It is indeed true that the image of the British as superior to the locals had been comprehensively shattered, and it is also true that British rule was frequently violent and almost always compelled in some way. What is neglected in this modern view is the level of cruelty by the Japanese; soldiers committed wonton acts of violence as a matter of course, rather than exception, including the mutilation and murder of civilians, prisoners, and anyone else unlucky enough to cross paths with them. Once this initial phase was over, the locals had to contend with the rounding up and executing of the ethnic Chinese of the area, forced labour, taking of comfort women for repeated rape and the consequent hundreds of thousands of deaths in Malaya and Singapore alone. This pales in comparison with the scale of carnage wrought by the Japanese in China itself (curious readers should look up the Rape of Nanking and Unit 731 and be prepared for a shock to the system), but alas, that is a story for another day.

11 squadron’s target that day must have seemed daunting; the aircraft carriers Akagi, Shokaku, Zuikaku, Soryu and Hiryu were all present. These 5 had all participated in the raid on Pearl Harbour and were a yet undefeated in battle, while their aviators had continued to inflict blows on startled allied defenders. They were protected by no fewer than 4 battleships and 11 cruisers, as well as numerous smaller craft. 

Having arrived just a week before, the crews may not have had long to get acclimated to the local political situation, but India in 1942 was to say the least uneasy. The All India Forward Bloc had been founded just 3 years before, and although methods varied considerably (think Gandhi on the one end, and Bose on the other end, who was actively working with Japan and Germany to try to foment discontent). While the cause of Indian independence was a righteous one, for the time being it was difficult for the British to manage, and fight a world war, particularly. with millions of Indian troops serving around the world.

Their own aircraft, the Bristol Blenheim, cannot have inspired complete confidence. First flying in the mid-1930s, at that time it was one of the fastest and most capable aircraft on the planet, able to evade enemy fighters simply by dint of its speed. However, such was the speed of aviation development that by the war’s outbreak, fighters had long since eclipsed the Blenheim’s performance, and the addition of defensive guns had only slowed it further; the resulting aircraft was dangerously vulnerable without a fighter escort (incidents of every single aircraft on a raid being destroyed were well-documented); and they were not going to get that escort on the 9th. 

Nevertheless, the crews, now knowing where their target lay, climbed aboard their aircraft. Checks followed; first the undercarriage, then control movement, engine cowling positions, propeller pitch; the ground crews would give each engine a good prime, and then with magnetos switched correctly, the engines could at last be started, spluttering into life, making the bombers throb with nervous energy as they were run up. Oil pressures, air pressures, r.p.m.s and magnetos all checked, they taxied out to the runways, opened up the engines, and with the roar of 18 propellers, 9 Blenheims rose skywards and turned into the Bay of Bengal. Propeller pitches set to coarse, they cruised at 11,000 ft, unsure of what awaited them, as the clock ticked on past 10:00.

But it was the Japanese turn to be surprised. It is difficult to know if any of the aircraft were spotted by the escorting ships, or indeed the combat air patrol of Zero fighters (there is some evidence they were spotted by Hiryu but the air raid warning was not passed on), but at 10:25, 11 squadron began their attack on the carriers. Bomb doors opened, aircraft held steady, bomb aimers squinted into bomb sights, straining to put the merchants of so much calamity out of action.  500 lb bombs hung, armed, in the bomb bays, any one of which could have caused serious damage, especially to the poorly armoured Japanese ships (in common with most US and Japanese carriers, the flight decks were made of little more than wood planking). Perhaps holding their breath, the bomb release buttons were jabbed, and each 500 pounder tumbled, spinning slightly as it fell earthward. 

Alas, it would be in vain. Every single one of the bombs dropped missed every single one of the Japanese carriers; worse still, now alerted of the allied air threat, fighters would be vectored in to swot away the British attempt. 11 squadron would lose 4 of the 9 Blenheims in quick succession, the crews having little chance of rescue even if they escaped their burning aeroplanes. To add insult to injury, aircraft returning from a Japanese raid elsewhere would claim another one of the returning Blenheims, a total loss rate of just over 55% for no effect. Nor would the Fleet Air Arm have any more luck; Admiral Somerville’s task force, despite being equipped with up-to-date radar and tactics that likely would have worked, were never in a position to do any harm to the Japanese Kido Butai. Even more embarrassingly, they felt obliged to retreat across the Indian Ocean to the east coast of Africa; outside Burma and India, Britain’s war in the far east was over. 

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Meanwhile, far to the east, across the Pacific in Hawaii, the smoke was beginning to clear from the attack on Pearl Harbour. Hoses played across the quaysides, pumps worked frantically, and coffer dams were being installed to allow work on the hulls of the damaged battleships. Tragically, the deaths had continued for some while after December 7th; the heart-breaking discovery had been made aboard West Virginia that 3 sailors had survived, and marked a calendar, for 16 days following the attack, with no way to escape; but on the whole the mood was on the up, particularly as the U.S. Navy found the base still usable (indeed, dry dock no.3 was completed ahead of schedule in 1942 and began to service destroyers and the like).

The U.S. situation in early 1942 was uncharacteristic for those familiar with modern-day America. In 1940, far from being the military juggernaut she is today, the US had only half a million service personnel across all services. To put that in perspective, Britain at the time had called up a total strength of 1,812,600 across its services, and was only one of two great powers fighting the axis. Hurrying to fill the ranks with the Selective Training and Service Act in 1940, men began to be drafted, but even on the eve of war, she would only scrape together 1,801,101. The vast majority of the now-famous equipment we think of as quintessential to their war effort (the M1 Garand rifle, the M4 Sherman tank, the P51 Mustang and so on) was not in widespread use or simply did not yet exist.

It is widely known that the attack on Pearl Harbour was an enormous shock (particularly as the average view of the Japanese was just as wide of the mark as the British), but what is less widely appreciated in Britain at least is the campaign in the Philippines. General Douglas MacArthur and his Philippine Army (of which he rather dubiously appointed himself field marshall) had been unable to stem the tide of Japanese invasion, and been forced to retreat to the Bataan peninsula, from which they would fight bravely, promised support that could not possibly arrive. While MacArthur was evacuated to Australia, 75,000 U.S. and Filipino soldiers surrendered, experiencing all the horrors (and more) of Japanese occupation on a death march to captivity.

Closer to home, under a wave of (on the whole completely unfounded) suspicion, the president signed Executive Order 9066, which ordered the expulsion of “any and all persons” who were felt to be a risk, from all areas of military importance. On the face of it, that may not sound too bad; the only problem was that the definition of an “area of military importance” had been left open to interpretation by the military, who swiftly decided that the entire west coast was an area of military importance, and that the “any and all persons” really just meant Japanese Americans. Thus are the dangers of being seen to be doing something.

There was as yet nowhere that U.S. ground forces were fighting German ground forces, and only a slow trickle of troops and aircraft into the UK (indeed, the later famous 8th air force would not be in a position to do any strategic bombing until the following year), nor had U.S. naval forces had any success in preventing the U-Boat’s Second Happy Time off the east coast. Moods were mixed as to what to do; it must be borne in mind that until December 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt had been maintaining his promise that the United States would not be involved in what was then seen as a European war; it is not surprising that some saw little point in continuing the war. Most wanted to continue, but despaired of the inability of the U.S. to make a direct impact; we might see FDR as a great wartime leader now, but this mood was not yet prevalent. In his “fireside chats” on the radio, the president attempted to inspire confidence, and spoke of the importance of maintaining supply routes across the seas (one of the few ways the U.S. could actually help her allies); in retrospect he was entirely right, but in a nation eager to see progress this seemed frustratingly feeble. 

What was desperately needed was a morale boost, a way of showing at home and abroad that the Americans were still in this fight. This need was answered by none other than Jimmy Doolittle, a man already famous for his aviation feats before the war (including, among other things, winning the Schneider, Bendix, and Thompson air races). He supposed that, with some equipment removed, the Army Air Force’s medium bombers could take off from the decks of aircraft carriers, bomb Japan and make it to friendly airfields in China, and he had the wherewithal and ability not only to persuade the Navy to support him, but to carry this raid out, himself actually flying the lead bomber. This is a fascinating story in its own right that rewards investigation, but for now just note that such was the brutality of the Japanese, and their shock that this should have been attempted, that they engaged in a months’ long campaign in China to capture the raiders; the Chinese leadership estimated that this may have cost as many as 250,000 Chinese casualties. 

Despite this success (and it may not have been widely appreciated at this stage) but it was a fact that the Imperial Japanese Navy outnumbered the U.S. Navy in the Pacific, at least in terms of aircraft carriers. The numbers were further depleted as resources had to be devoted to the Atlantic, and more esoteric duties like ferrying aircraft to Malta and other places. Until this deficit of ships was put right, it was not possible to protect troops from Japanese aircraft, and thus, there could be little thought of attacking anywhere. 

But how to do this? May had seen the inconclusive Battle of the Coral Sea. True, in retrospect, they had prevented a landing at Port Moresby on New Guinea, but trading the fleet carrier Lexington and significant damage to the Yorktown for sinking just one light carrier (Shokaku) and damaging another, was not sustainable. The battle had also (along with the efforts of Edward “Butch” O’Hare, the U.S. Navy’s first fighter ace, and the man after whom Chicago’s airport is named) conclusively proved Japanese aircraft were not invincible, but there seemed to be no prospect of destroying the Kido Butai anywhere soon.

Still, they could but try. U.S. intelligence had failed to predict the attack on Pearl Harbour (in hindsight this owed more to Japanese careful planning than any American incompetence), and had since been under considerable pressure to get results. To this end, they had broken elements of Japanese code, and were able to deduce that an attack was planned on “AF”; the trouble was that they did not know for certain what “AF” referred to. There was some inkling that the Japanese were looking to extend their perimeter into the Pacific, and by a process of elimination, the tiny (but appropriately named) island of Midway seemed likely. 

Fortunately the U.S. had an airfield on Midway island, a radio transmitter and an undersea telegraph cable. The latter two they decided to use for a clever ruse; it was known that the Japanese would intercept and (where they could) read radio messages; so the American codebreakers sent a message to the garrison on Midway, and asked them to send an uncoded radio message declaring that their water plant had broken down. Within a day, the Japanese message “AF is short of water” was decoded; AF was indeed Midway.

There was precious little time; the heavily damaged Yorktown was heroically put back to sea in just 72 hours, with dock workers still aboard. The carriers Enterprise and Hornet sortied also. Aircraft were rushed to the island, from the U.S. Navy, Marines, and Army Air Force, including (but not limited to) no less than 31 Catalina flying boats, and 17 Flying Fortresses. As May turned to June, the stage was set.

The Catalina was a strange-looking aircraft, even by flying boat standards; the hull was slung some distance below its one huge wing, with the two engines on top. It had two huge blisters aft (one per side) which could be used either as mounts for machine guns, or be peeled back to pick up stranded persons from the water, or for clear observation downwards while in flight. Known to the U.S. Navy as the PBY, it was one of many ugly but useful aircraft supplied by the Consolidated Aircraft Corporation, and while it was neither fast nor glamorous it did have an excellent endurance. This ability to stay in the air for long periods of time would make it ideal for keeping watch, and perhaps, as the PBYs bobbed up and down in the swell, the pilots at Midway might have said a little prayer that they would catch the enemy first.

Ensign Jack Reid was well-acquainted with the strangeness of the Catalina as he prepared to take his (along with his crew) on yet another reconnaissance sortie from Midway island, early on the morning of the 3rd June. After checking over the pale blue PBY, they fired up the two Pratt & Whitney engines, and gently taxied on the water, before Reid eased the throttles (which dangled from the ceiling of the cockpit in another example of the Catalina’s strangeness) forward, and the lumbering flying boat punched over the surface of the water, up onto the very surface, and at last with a little effort on the controls became airborne.

Many hours later, at around 0900, many hundreds of miles to the southwest of Midway, at last they saw what they thought they were looking for; columns of ships flying the “meatball” flag of the IJN. Radioing back at once, Midway, and by extension the whole U.S. military, now knew that the attack was real; on the airfield, the crews of 9 Flying Fortresses scrambled into their kit, were briefed, checked their aircraft, and then, to the roar of 36 Wright Cyclone engines, thundered off to the west to deal what was hoped to be the killer blow.

The Flying Fortress is a famous aircraft, and for good reason; ever since its first flight in the late 1930s, it has never ceased to impress, festooned with .50 calibre machine guns, with an impressive (for the 1930s) bomb load, and a shape made iconic not just by allied propaganda at the time, but countless movies, TV shows, books, museums and much else since. It is well remembered that later in the war over Germany the B17 would develop a reputation as a superb daylight bomber, the ultimate US counterpart to the British Lancaster in the round the clock bombing campaign, and whether that reputation is deserved or not, the aircraft has no shortage of defenders online. 

Unfortunately, for the task they were being sent to do on that June day, in the middle of the Pacific ocean, the B17 was a perfectly useless tool. It is true that the superb range of the aeroplane did get them over the target 3 hours after they had taken off (remember that powered flight at all, for any duration, had only been invented 39 years prior), and that the aircraft stood up quite well to the Japanese anti-aircraft fire, trying to hit moving ships from an aircraft flying tens of thousands of feet up in the air at a few hundred miles per hour, while being shot at, with varying winds, and no way to guide the bombs, was almost impossible. The B17 crews optimistically claimed to have scored 4 bomb hits, but in reality, nothing but near misses had been scored. It is possible that they mistook the splashes of bombs hitting the water near ships as hits, and as high up as they were, it may have been indistinguishable, especially while cold, frightened and tired from hours of flying.

There was another nasty surprise; sitting behind their near-frozen 0.50 calibre Brownings, straining at every patch of blue sky for that dot of an enemy fighter, the Fortresses’ gunners were to have an easier ride than they anticipated. No Japanese aircraft showed. Perhaps they were just relieved to make it out of the area alive, but I suspect this may have given them some unease; where were these carrier aircraft they had been warned about? If not here, where? 

Still, with the aircraft returning from the raid late on the 3rd June, the U.S. could not have considered the battle to be going badly. They had detected Japanese ships at long range and, if their crews were to be believed, had already scored some damage on them; to seal the deal, as dusk fell, several more PBYs were prepared, this time fitted with torpedoes. At night, their slow pace would not matter nearly so much, and so armed, the PBYs had some real teeth, as they bumped off the water and soared westwards; the small hours of the morning would see them claim first confirmed blood, with a Japanese oil tanker taking a torpedo hit at 0100. 

As the sun rose over the shimmering, salty blue of the Pacific, on the 4th June, the optimistic mood was shattered by a cry from the radar operators; a large Japanese raid was rapidly incoming. Pilots and ground crews ran to aircraft, smoke pouring from exhausts as cold engines were turned over rapidly and sputtered into life, and almost at random a collection of heavy and medium bombers, interspersed with defensive fighters, tore into the air.

The small fighter force, consisting of a mixture of F4F Wildcats and F2A Buffalos (the latter being a much-maligned, obsolete type that was only left in the theatre because of racist underestimation of the Japanese and only ever saw success in Finland of all places), must have swallowed hard at what they were being asked to do; the Japanese raid numbered over 100 aircraft, and their experienced pilots would despatch no fewer than 13 of the hapless Buffalos. Nevertheless, as the raid plunged toward Midway, they encountered fierce resistance from ground anti-aircraft fire; the thunder of shells turned skywards, crews remaining at their posts even as bombs rained down from dive bombers, had some effect. While losses in the air had been heavy, and casualties on the ground not exactly light, they had achieved their aim; by the time the last Japanese raider left, Midway’s defences were still largely intact.

Meanwhile, the U.S. bombers discovered to their horror why they had not encountered any enemy aircraft the day before; they hadn’t been attacking the Japanese carrier force at all, but merely the transports for the land forces. Going up against the Kido Butai was an entirely different matter, and despite the heroics of a number of pilots closing to make close-range torpedo strikes on the carriers, no significant damage was done, and more brave pilots and precious aircraft were lost. Not long later, the Japanese were able to recover their raiding force and begin the process of rearming and refuelling for another crack at Midway. The defenders braced for another crushing blow, as had befallen Wake, the Philippines, Malaya, and everywhere else the seemingly-invincible Japanese had touched. 

Far to the north, the U.S. Navy’s carriers prepared to have their go. This was always going to be something of a gamble (something admirals Fletcher and Spruance knew very well), with the range somewhat extreme, only a rough idea where the enemy actually was and knowing just how effective Japanese aircraft (particular their “Zero” fighters) could be. Nevertheless, they had at this moment the advantage of surprise, and they knew that not doing anything was simply not an option; keeping the Japanese busy with attacks would at the very least stop them launching further attacks on Midway.

Warming up on the sun-drenched flight deck of Hornet were the TBD Devastator Torpedo bombers of squadron VT-8. The Devastato carried a single torpedo along its centreline, and was peculiar in having corrugated metal construction, somewhat spoiling its otherwise graceful lines. In the late 1930s it had been an impressive leap forward in capability for the U.S. Navy, featuring retractable landing gear and having considerably lower drag than the biplanes typical of the time. While that was already a fair distance in the past, and the Devastator had yet to, ahem, devastate, with the props turning and the torpedoes armed, it was time for the rubber to hit the road.

VT-8’s task would be to go in first, trying to disrupt or sink Japanese carriers, and almost immediately it began to go wrong. Unlike the well-practiced Japanese, the Americans struggled to co-ordinate their launches anything like so well with the short notice they had. Nor did American pilots feel the need to stick rigidly to orders, even when told explicitly where they should fly to best encounter the enemy; as a result the Navy’s raid can best be described as haphazard. Some fighters even overestimated their range and were forced to ditch in the ocean when they ran out of fuel.

Fortunately, VT-8 did manage to make contact with the Japanese carriers; Akagi, Hiryu, Kaga, and Soryu. This was very good news… for a minute or so. As they closed to make their torpedo runs, the slow Devastators came under withering anti-aircraft fire, and were then jumped by the Zero fighters of the Kido Butai; by the end of the engagement, all 15 TBDs were shot down, and as each torpedo sliced its way through the water, its path failed to meet a single Japanese ship. VT-8 had been completely destroyed. Only one of its men would ever get to see the United States again. While Enterprise and Yorktown’s torpedo squadrons would also try, by 1000, the skies above the Kido Butai were clear once again.

But this is not where the story ends. Also included in the air groups of the U.S. carriers, flying at a much higher altitude, and much further behind the ill-fated VT-8, were SBD Dauntless dive bombers. Literally out of a clear blue sky, at 1025, (and more by accident than design) the dive bombers of Yorktown, Enterprise and Hornet all converged above the Japanese force, wheeling over into near vertical dives, their “swiss cheese” air brakes the only thing between them and certain doom. Inside the cockpit, pilots’ eyes strain through bombsights as the altimeter wheels downwards, the maneuvering carriers making less than ideal targets. As low as they dare, they hit the bomb release button on the stick and pull back for dear life, the blood rushing to their feet as their minds struggled to maintain consciousness against the G force, the Dauntless’ screaming along at near-wavetop height.

Only this time, the immense physical strain is not in vain. Multiple 1000 lb bombs race earthward; 3 each strike Kaga and Soryu and detonate; with both carriers full of flammable ordinance and aviation fuel, they are soon ablaze from stem to stern. One of the pilots of the Dauntlesses’  (appropriately named Richard Best) notices they are overfocusing on too few targets mid-dive, and leads a small number to attack Akagi; his 1,000 lb bomb whistles in, penetrates the thin wooden flight deck, and detonates inside Akagi’s hanger among the refuelling, rearming aircraft, causing a chain reaction of secondary explosions and fires. Before long, Akagi too is gutted by fire. In the space of scarcely 5 minutes, the Japanese have been smashed.

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Postscript; 

Over the course of the following 24 hours, in a series of actions, the Americans will essentially lose the Yorktown but sink the Hiryu. By the end of the 5th June, every single one of the Japanese carriers was sunk, and the tide had been irrevocably turned in the Pacific (a fact which would be bloodily underlined in the struggle for Guadalcanal some months later). 

Why do I write all this? Before any editing, this article is well over 5500 words long so far, by far the longest I have written here. It is not merely because it is an interesting story, not merely because it has a great pay-off at the end, a real triumph in the face of adversity, not because I am a bit too fond of military naval kit (these days I have a bit of a vested interest in that, as some of you will know). 

No, the reason I have told you this story, dear reader, is that despite the very large amount of bad news in this story (it is pretty bleak for the first 5500 or so words with only the odd hint of optimism), in truth, as we know now, the Allies actually held all the cards. They had strengths they were yet to realise, and their enemies were far more stricken with weakness than they had any reason to believe. 

For Nazi Germany, the clock was very much ticking. As oil reserves ran dry, the gamble of Operation Blue (which you may not have heard of) would be launched, to try to secure oil fields in the caucasus, ending in the catastrophic Battle of Stalingrad (which you will have heard of). Their failure in 1940 to knock Britain out of the war, and their failure in 1942 to knock the British out of Egypt or the Soviets out of Stalingrad would spell their ultimate doom. 

German industry, the military, and government were beset by Nazi bureaucracy and infighting, and all three were less efficient than their Allied counterparts. Before long, as their cities were pounded to rubble both day and night, even using slave labour from all over the continent, they would fail to produce anything like what was needed to defend what they had taken. 

So-called “brilliant” German generals would prove in 1942 that when they fought an enemy as prepared as they were, they held no aces, as Stalingrad and El Alamein would prove. In the Atlantic, Dönitz’s U-Boats would also prove to be defeatable, the “uncrackable” Enigma actually decryptable, and by the end of the war 30,000 out of the 40,000 U-Boat crew who served would be not just casualties, but dead. There would be rationing in Britain; but no starvation. It would take time; but Overlord would go ahead. 

The embarrassing “channel dash” was also a victory for the British in the long run; by moving the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Prinz Eugen back to Germany, apart from the occasional sortie against the arctic convoys or into the Baltic, they were now no threat to anyone. Scharnhorst would not even survive 1943, Gneisenau was so badly damaged the German admiralty decided to rebuild her, before Hitler decided this was a waste of time and most of her weapons were dispersed, and Prinz Eugen spent most of her time fighting no-one in the Baltic, before being taken as a prize by the USA at the end of the war and subsequently nuked (yes really, a story for another day).

Japan for her part had taken huge resources in her campaigns, but all of it had to be transported either on heavily disputed overland routes or by sea, a sea which would become increasingly unfriendly to Japanese traffic. The Japanese would not be able to turn this material wealth into enough new ships, aircraft, tanks, or anything else to regain the initiative in the Pacific, or even be able to supply their existing troops properly; while Japanese troops starved on Guadalcanal, their American counterparts were eating Christmas dinner, and the U.S. Navy served ice cream. In 1944, a British Pacific fleet (one with much better aircraft and tactics) would even re-appear.

Even some of Japan’s apparent strengths were illusory. Had the British held on a little longer in Singapore, they might have been faced with a Japanese army that had simply run out of supplies; in the story above, they also made mistake after mistake behind the scenes, leading to them failing to spot the U.S. fleet in time at Midway, or react quickly enough once they did. 

Without doubt their biggest mistake of all was that their ships lacked radar. Whereas the Americans and British were able to spot incoming raids and deal with them as they happened, in any visibility, the Japanese had to get lucky to spot planes using nothing but the mk1 eyeball, perhaps with the aid of binoculars. On every occasion, whether it be the British Blenheims, the Fortresses, or the ungainly PBYs, it was only dumb luck that allowed them to survive. And they only had to get unlucky once.

Neither was the sacrifice of VT-8 a complete waste; by forcing the Japanese to react to this attack, just as Spruance and Fletcher had hoped, their fighters had to burn fuel, which meant that by the time the dive bombers arrived, they were back on board the Japanese carriers and no threat to anyone. 

America was already beginning to flex her engineering muscle. The obsolete Brewster Buffalo was withdrawn, and in 1943 they and the Wildcats would be replaced with the superb F6F Hellcat and F4U Corsair. Even as VT-8’s Devastators were being hammered out of the sky, the far better (and very appropriately named) Grumman Avenger was already rolling off the production lines. Future carrier battles would be nothing like so evenly matched; one even to this day is still called the “Great Marianas Turkey Shoot”. 

As a manufacturing power the US would be utterly dominant in the war ahead, producing 192,000 aircraft (more than all the axis powers put together, despite being in the war for only 4 years), and adding to the 112,100 Soviet and 92,600 British. And that’s just aircraft, we haven’t got to the really impressive bit yet; over the course of the war, the shipyards of the USA would churn out no fewer than 155 aircraft carriers. Granted, most of these were of smaller escort types, but these yards were also busy building 2,710 “Liberty” cargo ships (the fastest of which went from keel laying to launch in just 4 and a half days), adding up to a total (including all other construction) of 5,500 ships.

The list just goes on, and on, and on, and on; it really is true that Victory in both Europe and the Pacific was a case of when, not if. Doubtless in your own life it sometimes seems that all around is bad, that the news will simply never get better. Have another think; things may not be as bleak as they seem, perhaps you just need one victory to turn that tide; at the very least you now have perhaps history’s greatest example.

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Post-postscript

If you are interested in the war in the pacific, I really must recommend the work of Jon Parshall; books, presentations, the lot. As well as being a well-respected historian he is also reasonably entertaining and has a superb presentation on 1942 which I highly recommend.

There is a superb amount of information available on the Imperial War Museum website, particularly on home front matters such as rationing, and a surprising number of fabulous aircraft manuals available for free online (see here, here, and here for example, but pretty much google your favourite ww2 aeroplane and the manual will likely be somewhere).