Intelligence in War: The Value--And Limitations--Of What the Military Can Learn About the Enemy (33 page)

There was much other imprecise but collateral intelligence confirming the MI fleet’s movements and purposes from several intercept sources in the first three days of June. Then at 6:04 a.m. Midway time on 3 June, a Catalina search flying-boat, on patrol from Midway, transmitted the report “Many planes heading Midway from 320 [degrees] distant 150 miles.”
²⁰
The pilot was Ensign Jack Reid, who had decided to extend his search time for a few minutes. He said to his co-pilot, “Do you see what I see?” His co-pilot answered, “You’re damned right I do.” Spread out before them, at their limit of vision, was an enormous assembly of warships. They knew at once that they had sighted part of the Midway attack fleet.

What Reid and his fellow aviator had seen was in fact the leading element of the Midway Occupation Force. On receipt of their sighting report, Captain Cyril Simard, in command at Midway, ordered nine of the fifteen Flying Fortress bombers based on the island’s airstrip to the attack. The Fortress, a four-engined aircraft flown by the Army Air Force, operated at high altitude and could strike targets with great precision; but army pilots always found bombing over water difficult, and 3 June was no exception. On return they reported hits on two battleships or heavy cruisers—none were present—and two transports. In practice they had hit nothing. Next morning four Catalina flying-boats, equipped with radar and torpedoes and flying at low level, did better, damaging an oiler. The attack did not, however, deter the advance of the Midway Occupation Force.

It may, however, have confirmed Nagumo’s intention to attack Midway itself with his carrier-based aircraft. Chuichi Nagumo was a bluff sea dog, much admired in the Japanese navy for his outspoken manner and fighting reputation. He had been a dashing destroyer captain and was notably unimpressed by American naval power, a matter of disagreement between him and Yamamoto. Yet, although he had commanded the carrier group that attacked Pearl Harbor, he was not a carrier specialist and does not seem fully to have understood naval aviation. Moreover “as a fleet-handler in wartime, he always hesitated, never being quite sure what to do.”
²¹
After Pearl Harbor, when Genda, the leader of the air attack, had urged him to send a second strike, he had prepared to rest on his laurels and withdraw the carrier fleet to a safe distance, though, as we now know, he could have attacked again with impunity. His indecision and wrong decision-making during the coming Midway battle would do much to rob Japan of victory.

At 4:30 on the morning of 4 June, Nagumo’s four carriers launched seventy-two Val and Kate bombers, escorted by thirty-six Zero fighters, to strike Midway. The Val was a dual-purpose aircraft, a dive- but also high-level bomber, with a speed of 200 mph and a range of 800 miles, superior to its American equivalent, the Douglas Dauntless. The Kate was a torpedo bomber, also able to drop bombs, with the same speed but a slightly shorter range than the Val, again superior to its American equivalent, the Douglas Devastator. Nagumo’s aircraft, led by Lieutenant Joichi Tomonaga, had 276 sea miles to fly to their target, well within the operational radius, but, unlike modern carrier aircraft, they had no radar, so that navigating the return flight to their mother ships was beset by hazard. There were other important differences between then and now. Second World War carriers were “straight deck,” unlike the modern angled-deck ships which can park recovered aircraft off the flight path of those landing on. Aircraft landing on did so with the recently recovered aircraft parked in front of them, unless there had been time to “strike down” the incomers, sending them below by elevator to the hangars on the next deck. Landing-on was therefore always a fraught business: there was the danger of an incoming aircraft missing the arrester wire with its hook and crashing into the aircraft park; there was also the possibility of enemy aircraft catching a carrier with much of its air group on deck, waiting to be struck down while landing-on took place.

Real safety for a carrier group lay in not being discovered by the enemy. Thanks to the decrypting activity of Joseph Rochefort and his staff at HYPO on Hawaii, however, the whereabouts of Nagumo’s carrier fleet was already known to Nimitz and his two task forces even before it had been sighted by the Midway Catalina on 3 June. He had already predicted that the gathering Japanese attack force would be found 175 miles from Midway on 4 June 1942, bearing 325 degrees, at 7 a.m. local time. “That forecast was the most stunning intelligence
coup
in all naval history.”
²²

Tactical intelligence then confirmed the prediction. As Tomonaga’s 108 carrier-launched aircraft headed for Midway, they were detected by a radar station on the island at 5:30 a.m., then lost, then identified again by a maritime radar. Midway received a report, “Many bogey aircraft bearing 310 degrees distance 93 [miles].” Midway at once launched all its fighters, six Wildcats, twenty Buffalos, to intercept the marauders.

The Wildcats and Buffalos, flown by U.S. Marine Corps pilots, were obsolete and outclassed as well as outnumbered by the Zeros. Only nine survived. Tomonaga’s aircraft, though they did a great deal of superficial damage, also suffered heavy losses to anti-aircraft fire and failed to put the Midway base out of action. As he began his return flight to
Hiryu,
Tomonaga reported to Nagumo that a second strike was required. Meanwhile, more than an hour before Tomonaga’s aircraft had attacked, Reid’s Catalina had sighted Nagumo’s force; Tomonaga’s aircraft had not yet left their mother ships. The Catalina, 200 miles outward from Midway to the northwest, first reported in a short cipher group “enemy carriers” at 5:34 a.m.. At 5:45 it signalled in plain language, intercepted by the combat information centre on
Enterprise,
“Many enemy planes heading Midway bearing 320 degrees distant 150 [miles],” an almost exact confirmation of HYPO’s prediction. Finally at 6:30 the Catalina, whose crew deserved to be regarded as one of the most efficient reporting units ever to have performed a naval reconnaissance mission, sent the message, “two carriers and battleships bearing 320 degrees distant 180 [miles] course 135 degrees speed 25 [knots].” The only falsity in the Catalina’s signal was the report of battleships; the pilot may have miscounted the number of carriers, in fact four, or have mistaken carriers for battleships.

Despite being seen by Nagumo’s force, and despite its very low speed, the Catalina got away. Soon after it left, other American aircraft appeared. They belonged to the land-based bomber squadrons on Midway, which Captain Simard had launched before Tomonaga’s arrival. It was their absence which had prompted Tomonaga’s warning that another attack was needed; he correctly anticipated that Midway was still an offensive base. He apparently did not conclude that the missing aircraft might be on their way to intercept the Japanese mother ships. They were. Soon after seven o’clock the carriers were attacked by six Avenger dive-bombers and four B-20 Marauder medium bombers. The Avengers, though quite fast by contemporary standards, were too few in number to swamp the defence and four were shot down by anti-aircraft fire or fighters. The Marauders, which were equipped with improvised torpedo launchers, pressed their attacks right home but scored no hits; two were destroyed. Just before eight o’clock a squadron of Marine Corps aircraft from Midway, sixteen Dauntless dive-bombers and eleven obsolete Vindicators, continued the attack: the Dauntless was a robust modern bomber, soon to win a reputation as the best carrier-borne American attack aircraft in the Pacific, but the Midway Marine pilots were unfamiliar with it, and the squadron commander did not attempt to dive-bomb. Six of his Dauntlesses were shot down, two damaged; no hits were scored. Finally, at about 8:10, Midway’s fifteen Flying Fortresses appeared overhead at 20,000 feet, dropped a concentrated pattern of heavy bombs on to the carrier group and departed, unscathed, believing they had hit several ships.

Wrongly; none of the Midway aircraft had inflicted damage to Nagumo’s ships, though they had killed some of his sailors. They had, however, seriously shaken Nagumo’s ability to think clearly. Always impulsive rather than analytical, he now allowed events instead of reason to prompt his responses. Admittedly, he was faced by a dilemma. The point of the Midway operation was not to destroy the island’s defences, or even to capture it, but to attract the surviving American carriers into a battle. The advance to Midway was the preliminary to springing a trap. Even though there was as yet no evidence of American carriers in the vicinity, Nagumo’s duty, as fleet commander, was to keep his ships prepared to fight a carrier battle if one suddenly erupted. On the other hand, he was also supposed to cover the landing force, which the defenders of Midway, if still active, might defeat. Moreover, they might launch a fourth strike on his ships.

In the circumstances he decided at 7:15 to “break the spot,” in American parlance: to alter the arrangements on his four carriers’ flight decks from preparation for an anti-ship strike to preparation for a repetition of the attack on Midway. That required the torpedo bombers to be re-armed with bombs, the dive-bombers to be re-armed with similar fragmentation bombs instead of armour-piercing bombs. Time-consuming work, particularly as the aircraft on deck had to be struck below to the hangars. As the work began, Tomonaga’s Midway aircraft started to land, together with the Zeros of the Combat Air Patrol, to refuel. While all this complex activity was in progress, Nagumo was given word, at 7:28, of the proximity of American surface ships after all. A seaplane catapulted from the cruiser
Tone,
silent until then, suddenly reported “sight what appears to be ten enemy surface ships in position bearing 10 degrees, speed over 20 knots.”
Tone
’s seaplane, because of catapult trouble, had left half an hour late. It was now almost at the limit of its search radius.

The news came at the worst possible moment for Nagumo. His decks were cluttered with aircraft just landed, and strewn with refuelling hoses. Many of his strike aircraft were below in the hangars, exchanging torpedoes for bombs or one sort of bomb for another sort. Yet instead of making the firm and obvious decision to launch an anti-ship strike, Nagumo dithered. He apparently thought he could cover himself by preparing for two missions at the same time. At 7:45 he signalled the fleet, “Prepare to carry out attacks on enemy fleet units. Leave torpedoes on those attack planes which have not as yet changed to bombs.”
²³
Then, in a brisk afterthought, he radioed
Tone
’s seaplane, “Ascertain ship types and maintain contact.”

Perhaps, Nagumo may have thought
Tone
’s seaplane would not have found American carriers. In any case, as if to vindicate his decision to preserve some capacity to resume the attack on Midway, it was at this point that the last attack from the island, by Dauntlesses, Vindicators and Flying Fortresses, was received. Despite its failure, it disturbed the fleet’s formation and further discomposed Nagumo’s ability to analyse the tactical situation. At 7:58
Tone
’s seaplane reported that the enemy fleet had changed course from 150 to 180 degrees. Nagumo demanded, “Report ship types.” At 8:09 the seaplane answered, “Enemy is composed of five cruisers and five destroyers.” Nagumo’s anxieties seemed allayed, particularly as at 8:29 the last bomb-splashes raised by Midway’s Flying Fortresses collapsed harmlessly into the sea. Refuelling and re-arming were almost complete. The moment of danger appeared to have passed.

Then, at 8:20, just before the Fortresses departed,
Tone
’s maddeningly deliberate seaplane radioed, “The enemy is accompanied by what appears to be a carrier bringing up the rear.” Nagumo had made a mistake; quite how serious the next hour and twenty minutes would reveal.
Tone
’s seaplane crew were not wholly to be blamed for their dilatory identification of danger. The fourth of June 1942, in the north-central Pacific, was bright and sunny but the sky was spotted by clouds. The Americans flying from Midway had found the Japanese ships they sighted appearing and disappearing with bewildering rapidity. The clouds broke up their field of vision, denying a panorama.
Tone
’s seaplane had had the same experience.

The consequences of its incomplete reporting, however excused, were disastrous. In the hour and twenty-seven minutes between 7:28 and 8:55, from first sighting of the American task forces and reception of the
Tone
seaplane’s last ominous message, “Ten enemy torpedo planes heading towards you,” Nagumo might, by better thinking, have put his fleet into a state of defence, prepared his bombers and torpedo aircraft for an anti-ship strike and got them, with a refuelled Combat Air Patrol, off the decks. As it was, though most of his Zeros were refuelled and aloft by the time the crisis came, his other aircraft were either below decks or not yet struck below, while the decks of his four carriers were littered with fuel hoses and loose ordnance.

Spruance, commanding
Enterprise
and
Hornet,
because he could not enjoy the luxury of indecision, had reacted with single-minded positivity to the Midway Catalina’s report of Japanese proximity received at 5:34. He had first decided to close the distance to no more than a hundred miles before launching. When he got news of Tomonaga’s attack on Midway, he decided to launch earlier, making the calculation that he might thereby catch Tomonaga’s aircraft landing or waiting to be refuelled and re-armed. It was an acute judgement. Shortly after six o’clock, and although he committed his pilots to a flight of 175 instead of 100 miles, he decided to advance his launch time from 9 a.m. to 7 a.m. Fletcher, commanding
Yorktown
(Task Force 17), operating north of Task Force 16, decided to hold his hand. He believed that at the Coral Sea he had launched too soon and did not intend to repeat his error.

Spruance’s strike force comprised almost equal numbers from
Enterprise
and
Hornet:
sixty-seven Dauntless dive-bombers, twenty-nine Devastator torpedo bombers and twenty Wildcat fighters to fly escort. The earliest aloft were ordered to orbit, while they waited for a full launch, so that the carriers could deliver a concentrated blow. At 7:45, however, concerned that his leading flights might run out of fuel, Spruance ordered them to set off for the Japanese. By 8:06, all were on their way. There were six squadrons in the air, Bombing 6, Scouting 6 (bombers) and Torpedo 6 from
Enterprise,
Bombing 8, Scouting 8 and Torpedo 8 from
Hornet
, with those fighters of Fighting 6 and 8 not flying Combat Air Patrol in company.