The Pacific (13 page)

Sleep must have come easily for the pilots of Scouting Six. With several enemy task forces still steaming toward Midway, including a flattop, the Klaxon for general quarters and the call to man their planes would wake them early the next morning. As they slept, the Big E,
Hornet
, and their respective flocks of support ships steamed back toward the U.S. mainland, away from the enemy and the damaged
Yorktown
. In the early hours, the task force reversed course. As the pilots came back into the ready room on June 5, they were once again headed into battle. The fighters launched first, determined to protect the remaining carriers; then the search planes took off. Most of Scouting Six sat in their ready room and waited. As the morning passed, it became clear that the enemy had given up. The task force sped up its chase westward, hunting the retreating enemy.

That day and the next, the scouts found a few stragglers, enemy surface ships that either had hung around to pluck their men from the sea or had been too damaged to move quickly. The dive- bombers went after them. Without the danger of Zeros, these ships should have been easy marks. The results, however, were mixed. Scouts reported finding the enemy ships several times. The reports proved misleading or completely false. The remaining carrier dive- bombers did hit two enemy larger cruisers or battleships. One enemy ship not only dodged the bombs of thirty-two diving Dauntlesses, however, but also shot one plane down with its AA guns. Returning from this mission, one that certainly did not justify the loss of a crew, Micheel and a few other new pilots received credit for their first night landing.

They had seen the necessity of a night carrier landing coming from a long way off, as the water went from blue to black below them. They reached the Big E as the light failed, causing difficulties as the Dauntlesses jostled to get into the landing groove. A dim red light illuminated the dials and gauges on the planes' control panels. Below them, the flattop's landing lights came on, outlining the flight deck. Coming around the stern of the ship, Mike saw that the LSO had lighted paddles to guide him in and give him the cut. After he was aboard, he admitted to himself that getting aboard had been "another pucker job." One of his colleagues mistakenly landed on
Hornet
, while a few
Hornet
planes landed on
Enterprise
.

With the return of the sortie, the Battle of Midway ended. By the next morning, the Japanese ships would be within range of their land-based planes on Wake Island. The U.S. carrier squadrons had chased the enemy as far as was prudent and necessary. There was time to linger in the wardroom after dinner and talk. A bottle of whiskey came out and was passed among them. Though normally an illegal maneuver in Uncle Sam's navy, all of the aircrews had the opportunity to drink--if not from a personal supply then from the ship's doctor. Mike had a shot. After much discussion, the pilots decided the ship that had eluded them had been a light cruiser, and those were just too fast and too small to hit. The disappearance of the enemy task forces, still numerically superior and suspected of including a carrier, remained a surprise to Mike. It just didn't make sense to him.

In the early hours of June 7, before he and the pilots of Scouting Six reached their ready room, USS
Yorktown
slipped beneath the waves, the victim of a Japanese submarine's torpedoes. The two remaining American flattops fueled the fleet and set sail for Alaska, which had also been attacked by aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Navy. The day marked the six-month anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor--June 7 even fell on a Sunday. The pilots could relax and savor the moment. The army bombers on Midway were reporting more hits on the fleeing enemy. After a few days, a storm settled in around them and canceled flight operations. The task force soon gave up Alaska, turned around, and headed south for Pearl Harbor. On the way back, the radio room picked up a broadcast from Tokyo. The empire claimed to have sunk "one aircraft carrier of the 'Enterprise type' and one of the 'Hornet type,' each of 19,900 tons."
¹⁷
The claim stood in stark contrast to Radio Tokyo's claim of June 6--that it had sunk six U.S. carriers and captured Midway Island.
¹⁸
On board
Enterprise
and the other ships that had won the battle of Midway, men estimated the Japanese losses at "four--possibly five--Japanese carriers," plus "three battleships damaged or sunk," as well as "four cruisers and four troop transports" damaged or sunk.
^j
As many as eighteen thousand to twenty thousand Japanese had gone down with those ships.
¹⁹
Since
Yorktown
had been abandoned before she sank, her personnel taken aboard the escorts, the U.S. losses would be slight by comparison.

Ensign John Lough's best friend on
Enterprise
was eventually tasked with surveying the missing pilot's belongings. Many men had the same task at that same moment. "The thing to do," Mike was told, "is to go through everything he's got . . . if there's anything there that's questionable," anything that might upset his parents, "you don't send it to them." In John's stateroom, he found nothing the least objectionable. John had been "a straight arrow kid." In the box of personal items Mike included a letter because he had to say something. He knew them. Expressions of friendship and of loss made it past the censors, not details. Although some flight crews had been pulled from the water in the days after the battle, Mike held out little hope of John's rescue. His duty to John made thoughts of his own fate unavoidable. "You're not infallible," he told himself as he packed it all up. Nothing could protect him from a bad break in the dangerous life of a naval aviator.

On the morning of June 13, two weeks after the battle for Midway began, the carriers neared the Hawaiian Islands and the squadrons took off for Ford Island.
²⁰
Upon arrival the pilots were granted liberty and given a room at one of the fine hotels on Waikiki Beach--the Royal Hawaiian or the Moana--reserved by the navy. Officers paid $1 per night to stay at a hotel where guests paid $70 a night in peacetime.
²¹
The pilots certainly recognized this as one of those times when rank had its privileges. The pampering staff and the fine cuisine had disappeared, however. Honolulu had barbed wire on its beaches, checkpoints with armed guards, and a ten p.m. curfew. Businesses downtown had limited hours of operation. The city was completely blacked out at night. The two hotels, under these conditions and filled with navy officers, felt a lot like being on a carrier except everybody wore their dress uniforms. The young ladies on the beach and in the restaurants attracted a lot of attention. Mike decided not to try to elbow his way through the crowd to speak with one.

All the civilians knew about the Battle of Midway; the newspapers had carried the story since the day it began. On June 4, U.S. military leaders assured the public they had expected an enemy attack on U.S. territory as a reprisal "for the April 18 raid on Tokyo and other Jap industrial centers by Brigadier General Jimmy Doolittle and 79 intrepid companions."
²²
Admiral Nimitz, commander of the Pacific Fleet, had been cautious initially about announcing the number and type of ships sunk at Midway.
²³
His press releases praised the efforts of all those who had inflicted "very heavy" damage on the enemy, particularly the flight crews of the army, navy, and Marine Corps. In the days that had followed, reporters citing unnamed sources in naval intelligence leaked the fact that the U.S. forces "Knew Jap Task Force Was Coming--And Were Ready." Nimitz declared on June 6 that "Pearl Harbor has been partially avenged," and began providing details about what the reporters began calling "the greatest naval battle of the war."
²⁴

The day before
Enterprise
's squadrons arrived at their hotels in Waikiki, the newspapers had headlined interviews with the flight crews of the army air corps' big bombers. "The Army pilots who actually dropped the bombs reported personally that they made hits on three Japanese carriers . . ."
²⁵
The dive-bomber pilots not only believed they represented a revolution in naval warfare about which the public was largely ignorant, but knew they had sunk the flattops.
²⁶
The first night in the dining room of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, a table full of Scouting Six pilots found themselves within earshot of a table of army pilots. The crews of the four- engine and twin-engine bombers spoke of sinking the carriers. Incensed by one army pilot's account of how he won the battle, one of the Dauntless pilots yelled, "By God, that's a damn lie!" and the fight was on.
²⁷
Bill Pittman, Mike's roommate, took part in the melee and told him all about it the next day.

Even as some Scouting Six pilots raised a little hell, others were coming back from it. Micheel spotted Tony Schneider, one of the Big E's missing Dauntless pilots. Ensign Schneider, with Bombing Six, said he and Lieutenant Edwin Kroeger had run out of gas on the return from the first bombing run. They had landed near one another and the four men had gotten into two rafts. It had taken five days for them to be picked up, Tony said, five days in a rubber raft in an empty ocean. Mike told him his story of following two planes on his return from the first mission and something struck a chord. As they discussed the way the two planes went down, Tony and Mike came to believe they had shared that terrifying moment.

SID'S FATHER HAD DRIVEN THEM OUT OF MOBILE THROUGH THE NEW BANKHEAD Tunnel and let them off by the side of the highway. Sidney Phillips and William "W. O." Brown had been joined by another How Company man on his way back from Biloxi. Securing rides north proved difficult and the three arrived late into their base at New River. They walked in nervously, knowing what happened to marines found to be AWOL (absent without leave). As it turned out, most of the regiment had had the same problem to some degree, so their tardiness was ignored.

During the first week of June, they had Field Days, meaning they cleaned their camp. They also packed the battalion's equipment before moving on to their weapons, their packs, and their seabags. Orders to put their coats and their bathing suits on the top of their seabags offered no clues as to their impending destination.

On June 8, they packed all day and boarded the train. Sid and his friend John "Deacon" Tatum claimed the last two seats in the last coach. At last they were under way. The feeling of adventure gathered steam as the world they knew passed. In Chattanooga they jumped off to get candy and ice cream. When night came, the black porters made up their beds in the sleeping car with clean sheets. In a few days, the old locomotive pulled them into the vast Southwest. The vistas opening up before them were ignored by the platoon, but the cattle ranches and oil wells and herds of antelope delighted Sid and Deacon. Place- names floated past: Dodge City, Boot Hill, even a monument to Wild Bill Hickok. At one stop they bought souvenirs from some Indian woman and told themselves they were "sightseeing at government expense." They stopped for lunch at a Harvey House and one of the women asked them if they were CCC boys.
^k
Like many civilians, she did not recognize the green USMC uniform, but the angry response her question elicited fixed that.

The thrill of the new, however, explained only part of the energy and excitement in the air. A feeling of impermanence gilded every moment.
²⁸
Even after arriving in San Francisco on June 13 and being assigned a berth on a ship in the harbor, the feeling of a higher purpose impelling them toward an unknown destination produced a carefree exuberance. They were not allowed to leave the ship every day, or even for an entire day. How Company stood inspection one morning, just to keep discipline tight. When liberty came they found many locations under guard, like the Golden Gate Bridge and the Oakland Bay Bridge. While some of How Company found their way to a bar, and others to the theater, Deacon and Sid walked to Chinatown. Signs in English gave way to exotic hieroglyphics. "Boy," Deacon declared, "those chink gals are good-looking." The wares displayed for sale included the strange and the unknown. Sid bought a newspaper and read about the navy's victory at Midway. He wondered if his uncle, a navy pilot, had been involved. The newspaper also carried a story about the big General MacArthur Day celebration held at a local stadium, when soldiers leaped from their foxholes "just as they did at Bataan."
²⁹
At a bookstore he bought some great books on the Civil War, which he sent home.

All leaves were canceled on Sunday, June 21. Each marine aboard USS
George F. Elliott,
the entire 2nd Battalion of the First Marines (2/1), had to dump out the contents of his seabag on the pier for inspection. The word was the ship would sail at three a.m. This time, the word was close. At four a.m. it stood out from the pier and steamed past the island of Alcatraz. A marine called to a figure standing on the prison's dock, "Hey, Lucky, want to trade places?"
Elliott
passed through the submarine nets, under the Golden Gate Bridge, and into open sea. Twelve ships joined
Elliott,
which Sid noted unhappily bore the number AP 13. Towering waves and gale- force winds rocked the convoy. The vomiting began soon thereafter. Those who became seasick joined those who were hungover and soon the heads (toilets) were filled and the deck was awash with vomit. Sid and Deacon watched the coast fall away.