Midway

 

God is wise and in not telling us the future of events on earth.  We usually can’t handle it. Saul knew full well, God had picked David as future king and spent the remainder of his life fighting it. Hezekiah got another 15 years of life and then squandered it.  But the Navy boys didn’t squander their opportunity in the decisive, historic victory in the battle of Midway.

            The disaster at Pearl Harbor was missed by military intelligence, and nobody felt worse for it than Capt. Ed Layton who was commander of HYPO, a military intel group in Honolulu.  He offered to resign, but Adm. Chester Nimitz asked him to stay on.  We now know that Layton and Capt. Joseph Rochefort had missed the attack because Washington, DC, high command had not let them see diplomatic messages.  Rochefort was a brilliant, eccentric officer who often wore slippers and a bathrobe over his uniform.  He often spent days sequestered with a code.  He and Layton had met on assignment in the 30s to the Tokyo embassy and knew fluent Japanese.  USA had decoded part of the Nippon’s JN-25b code. HYPO deduced that the next likely attack was Midway, 1300 miles NW of Hawaii.  Gaining its air field, Japan could bomb and then invade Hawaii. They also found evidence for an attack on Alaska.  Washington disagreed.  They had the same messages and thought Solomon islands were likely--to cut off  Australia and New Zealand and invade there. It came down to identifying target “AF”. Who was right? Nimitz trusted his Pacific HYPO guys and withdrew the Enterprise near to Midway.  But such was a neglect of his orders to return to Hawaii.  Yorktown was in Hawaii and he ordered a frantic fix of the crippled carrier.  What we now realize is that the Japanese Army and Navy were arguing.  The Army wanted to invade Alaska.  With only 30,000 non-natives it would be a cakewalk. Nippon’s.Navy was intent on going for the kill of America’s Navy with a trap set at Midway.  High command decided both attacks would happen simultaneously.

            Nimitz told HYPO they’d have to come up with “proof” to convince DC that a strike was due at Midway. Jasper Holmes, an engineer at Hawaii University, had been reactivated and had just joined HYPO.  He had a plan.  Have the Midway base broadcast, without encryption, that they had an emergency with their desalination water plant. Sure enough, Rochefort intercepted a coded Japanese message to include extra water with the invasion fleet.  Plus, there was a surprise—exact date of the attack, June 4, 1942.  Then Rochefort worked on another more heavily encrypted message containing the battle plan, route, etc.  By luck he found the code-breaker and thus Nimitz knew the battle plan.  The Admiral had 3 fleet carriers and six small sea carriers and the airbase.  Japan had 4 fleet carriers and a dozen sea carriers, far more destroyers and battleships. And they mistakenly thought, secrecy.

            With advance notice, Midway sent its planes aloft and was ready with anti-aircraft guns.  As they held off the bombing raid, planes attacked the widely dispersed (for secrecy) Japanese fleet.  But inexperienced US pilots and pitiful American torpedoes that wouldn’t detonate, plus Japan’s skilled fighter pilots won resoundingly.  The Nipponese badly disabled Yorktown.  Then they received word that Midway had been on alert and not much hurt by the raid.  So another round of land bombs was being re-armed on returning planes.

             Then came America’s Dauntless.  Dauntless Douglas Dive-bombers under Lt. Dick Best and Wade McClusky, squadron commanders, targeted the Kaga and Asagi (flagship). Kaga took several hits and because the Japanese were re-arming, bomb stacks, fuel hoses lay all over the lower decks. These erupted in massive fires.  Best then targeted Asagi.  His own DSB Dauntless put a 500-lb. bomb down the elevator of the ship causing a terrific explosion. Japanese carriers had cost-saving wooden decks and thus were at risk for fire.  A third carrier, the Soryu, was also destroyed. Hence returning Japanese pilots, with no place to land, had to ditch in the sea.  The following day, the Dauntlesses destroyed the Hiryu and the Japanese called a retreat. They had lost 6000 men and half their Pacific fleet.  Nipponese naval dominance never recovered after Midway. With Yorktown unsalvageable, the United States now had just 4 Pacific fleet carriers vs. Japan’s 4.  In the next 3 years, Japan would build 3 more.  But USA built 24. And the Japanese Army found themselves stranded without Navy support on two Aleutian islands after Midway.

            Layton, Rochefort, Holmes, and Best all came from small town America—small towns with big churches—and each of them was influenced by Protestant faith.  As Dick Best said, “You never know when your end is coming so live as much as you can.”  He fought Midway with tuberculosis and was discharged later that year.  Layton became a Rear Admiral; Holmes, head of the HU math department. Cryptoanalyst, Joseph Rochefort  died in 1976 and peers took up cause that he be decorated (He had not. Did the Navy have to have someone to blame for Pearl??).  Posthumously, he was awarded the President’s Medal of Freedom. Richard Halsey “Dick” Best, the super pilot, fought through his TB, and outlived them all.  He died in 2001.  “Live as much as you can.”