Little about the history of the United States Navy has inspired a greater body of literature, research, analysis, and media attention than the June 1942 Battle of Midway. That monumental clash ranks among the most crucial battles of World War II, and for many it is the renowned “turning point” in the Pacific that abruptly halted the expansion of Japan’s empire and put the enemy on the defensive for the remainder of the war. Consequently, the Battle of Midway has stimulated a decades-long succession of books, articles, essays, graduate studies, motion pictures, and television documentaries, and it has been analyzed and refought countless times at the U.S. Naval Academy and the Naval War College. From all of that, and at this late date more than 60 years after the fact, one might conclude that nothing new or important is to be learned about the battle.
That conclusion would be wrong. A thorough understanding of the victory at Midway has only been accomplished over the expanse of time, starting with the discovery of the official Japanese after-action report on Saipan in 1944 and continuing for many years as additional facts about the battle came to light and as previous assumptions were found to have been wrong. A significant example of one false assumption concerns early, widely-published claims by the U.S. Army Air Forces that their Midway-based B-17 and B-26 bombers had scored hits on two Japanese carriers and two battleships and had sunk a cruiser.1 The 1947 release of the Japanese after-action report revealed that, in reality, Army aircraft scored no hits during the battle.2 Moreover, the “cruiser” reported as sunk was actually the submarine USS Grayling (SS-209), which had to crash-dive in order to avoid the Army bombs. These facts did not become generally known until four years after the war’s end, with the publication of Volume IV of Samuel Elliot Morison’s expansive history of U.S. naval operations in World War II.3 And they did not get significant public exposure until Walter Lord repeated the story in his best-seller Incredible Victory in 1967.4
Over time, other details of the battle were gradually revealed or occasionally redefined. Some were important, such as the bitter in-fighting between the codebreakers in Hawaii and their bosses in Washington—a potentially deadly drama that could have resulted in a fatal miscalculation of the enemy’s intentions at Midway.5 Others were less crucial, such as claims by various pilots and aircrews that they had attacked a specific Japanese carrier. Careful analysis of the evidence demonstrated that their target had been a different ship. Such disclosures have helped to sustain a high level of interest in the Battle of Midway across a broad expanse of military professionals, authors, media producers, and historians.
Torpedo Eight
The battle itself is a story with many elements, each with its own importance, drama, and intensity. Virtually any discussion of the Battle of Midway, however, ultimately turns to Torpedo Squadron Eight (VT-8), flying from the carrier USS Hornet (CV-8). As most readers of Naval History and segments of the general public are aware, Lieutenant Commander John C. Waldron and his entire squadron, save one pilot, were lost in a desperate, unsuccessful attack on the Japanese carriers the first day of the battle.
By coincidence, movie producer John Ford had obtained detailed color film footage of VT-8’s aircrews and planes a few weeks earlier, which he wove into a moving documentary tribute to Waldron and his men. Thirty copies were made of the eight-minute film, Torpedo Squadron 8, and given only to family members of the pilots and crewmen. The film was not released for public showing, but Ford used brief clips from it in his movie The Battle of Midway, which was widely viewed in theaters, helping to engender a broad public awareness of the squadron’s gallant sacrifice.
Of course, the seminal act in the VT-8 drama was Waldron’s defiance of his immediate superior, Commander Stanhope C. Ring, commander of the Hornet air group. We learn of that primarily from the memoirs of VT-8’s sole surviving airman, Ensign George H. Gay, who reported a sharp disagreement between Waldron and Ring regarding which course the Hornet’s aircraft should fly in order to find the enemy fleet.6 Ring had decided on his preferred course at the conclusion of a conference held on the carrier’s bridge just before launch on the morning of 4 June 1942, the first day of the battle. Virtually no one agreed with him, from his pilots in their ready rooms to his four squadron commanders, each of whom had plotted a proposed intercept course on his own.7 Ring was unmoved by his subordinates’ opinions. With single-minded determination, he led them on his chosen track, which Waldron endured for perhaps 20 to 30 minutes before he could stand it no longer. He broke radio silence to inform Ring that he was going to find the Japanese carriers even if he had to do it on his own. With that, he banked his torpedo bomber away from the rest of the air group, leading his squadron unerringly to the target and to glory.8
Ring continued on his predetermined path with Fighting Squadron Eight (VF-8) and two dive bomber squadrons— Bombing Squadron Eight (VB-8) and Scouting Squadron Eight (VS-8)—dutifully following. In stark contrast to the air groups from Midway Atoll and from two other U.S. carriers, he not only failed to find any Japanese ships, but extended his search beyond the point of no return for many of his planes. All of his fighters ditched because of lack of fuel (with the loss of two pilots), and most of VB-8 opted for a landing on Midway rather than risk a similar fate. Only Ring, his wingman, VS-8, and three planes from VB-8 made it back to the Hornet. Ten fighters, three dive bombers, and 15 torpedo planes, along with 39 pilots and crew, had been lost.9
The Official View
Why did Ring fail to find the Japanese fleet, and why did Waldron succeed? The traditional explanation comes from the Hornet's official after-action report, penned by its skipper, Captain (Rear Admiral-select) Marc A. Mitscher. According to Mitscher, Ring led his air group more or less along the same track as those from the carriers Enterprise (CV-6) and Yorktown (CV-5), generally toward the southwest along a course of approximately 240° true (relative to the Hornet at the time of launch; see Figure 1). Waldron, somehow knowing that such a course would fail to find the enemy, broke to the right and headed northwest. The rest of Ring’s group missed the fight because they all turned south toward Midway or to return to the Hornet, whereas the Enterprise and Yorktown pilots all turned northward in some variation of Waldron’s track. That was graphically displayed by Morison, whose history served as the primary resource for nearly every subsequent work on the Battle of Midway.10
That official view of the flight of the Hornet air group on the morning of 4 June was accepted without question for four decades until one day in 1981. A friend of one of the two VF-8 pilots who was killed when his fighter ran out of fuel stumbled on an artifact from the battle that changed everything. Bowen P. Weisheit, a retired Marine Corps major and a former fraternity brother of the fighter pilot, Ensign C. M. Kelly Jr., had been an aerial navigation instructor during the war. The artifact, which showed the latitude and longitude of the point where a PBY Catalina flying boat had rescued several of Kelly’s squadron mates, all of whom had ditched in the same vicinity as Kelly, piqued the navigator’s interest. He noted that the indicated pickup point was more than 150 miles from the location reflected in the traditional histories. That caused Weisheit to wonder a great deal about his friend’s death. Did it have to happen where it did? And why does the official record show that it occurred somewhere else?
Search, Discovery, and Support
Major Weisheit began a search to learn every possible detail about the actual navigational tracks flown by the Hornet’s squadrons. That search led to the discovery of what appeared to be a very significant and previously unpublicized error in Captain Mitscher’s official report: Air group commander Ring had led his 59 planes nearly due west of the ship after launch, not southwest toward the presumed location of the Japanese fleet, as had been universally accepted for more than 40 years. That meant that each of the squadrons, including Kelly’s VF-8 and the heroic torpedomen of VT-8, had flown a track substantially at odds with that portrayed in the usual references.
Major Weisheit augmented his research by personal interviews with veterans of the air group, including VF-8 pilot Captain Humphrey L. Tallman; VB-8 pilot Captain Troy T. Guillory; and the commander of VS-8, Rear Admiral Walter F. Rodee. Each reported seeing VT-8 break away to the left from their heading, not to the right as reported by Mitscher and Morison. If Commander Ring had led his force west of the Hornet, Waldron must have turned left; if Ring’s group had taken the same southwesterly course that the Enterprise and Yorktown air groups flew, VT-8 would have broken to the right. None of Major Weisheit’s interviewees supported a turn to the right by VT-8. Moreover, Admiral Rodee specifically remembered the actual course the air group flew upon launch—265° true—nearly due west (see Figure 2).11
When asked which way Waldron went when he turned away, Chief Aviation Electronics Technician Richard T. Woodson, who had flown with VS-8 during the battle and who had previously stated that he had seen VT-8 break off from the rest of the air group, recalled: “The TBDs (torpedo bombers) broke left from us. They held formation in a turn that was about 30° to port from our heading.”
It is noteworthy that Chief Woodson had never spoken with Major Weisheit and knew nothing about the book— The Last Flight of Ensign C. Markland Kelly, Junior, USNR,—based on his research, yet Woodson’s eyewitness account of VT-8 breaking obliquely left from the air group is precisely consistent with Weisheit’s findings and diametrically opposed to the version related in the familiar works and in the Navy’s official report.
Whether Ring led his planes to the southwest or to the west that morning may seem a trivial matter, but it becomes serious when one examines the consequences of the course postulated by Weisheit. In Figure 2, the point where the air group would intersect the Japanese carriers’ track is actually behind the spot where the ships were first reported by the PBY. Since Ring and his planes could not get to that location for nearly four hours after the initial sighting, the enemy carriers obviously would have advanced nearly 100 miles to the southeast by that time. Thus, it would seem that a course of 265° true had no chance of encountering the enemy fleet, and that should have been obvious to Ring, Mitscher, and everyone else on the Hornet’s bridge during their pre-launch meeting.
If Ring did lead his air group on a course of 265° true, the chief consequence of that decision was to remove from the battle two of the U.S. Navy’s five dive bomber squadrons committed to action that morning. We will never know what might have occurred if VB-8 and VS-8 had managed to appear over the Japanese carriers at more or less the same time as the three squadrons from Enterprise and Yorktown. What we do know is that only three, not five, squadrons dove on the enemy fleet, and only three, not four, of their carriers were sunk as a result. Their fourth and last carrier was untouched and mounted a counterstrike that eventually resulted in the sinking of the Yorktown and the destroyer USS Hartmann (DD-412). Could VB-8 and VS-8 have prevented that tragedy by providing enough force to neutralize the entire Japanese air fleet at the outset? A number of developments in the course of the Battle of Midway seem even less plausible than that, so it must be considered as at least a reasonable possibility. That is why a deliberate decision by Ring to take his planes west from the Hornet and therefore effectively out of the battle would be a very serious matter.
Support for the Official Record
Major Weisheit’s discovery has not by any means dissuaded everyone who holds to the traditional view. Indeed, there are a few strong arguments that Ring actually did fly the course depicted in Mitscher’s official report. George Gay stated that Waldron told him “the group commander is going to take the whole bunch down there [emphasis added]. I’m going more to the north. . .”12 “Down there” does not jell with a westerly course of 265, but it is consistent with the southwesterly track flown by the Enterprise and Yorktown air groups. And “more to the north” could only come about by starting toward the south. It should be noted, though, that Gay’s book was written 37 years after the battle and contains a number of statements known or suspected to be wrong, such as which enemy ship he attacked and whether he was literally adrift in the midst of the Japanese task force, watching as U.S. dive bombers struck their carriers. In light of such apparent flaws and the time lapse in producing his book, one reasonably wonders if Gay’s recollection concerning Waldron’s statement is based on a clear factual memory or possibly on latter-day research into the familiar written record.
The traditional view has another respected supporter. Ring’s wing- man that morning was Commander Clayton E. Fisher, who believes the official report to be correct. He bases his belief mainly on the fact that, upon turning back toward the Hornet, he sighted a single black column of smoke to the southeast that he assumed to be the burning oil tanks on Midway—he says he could not possibly have seen it from the remote location Major Weisheit places him at that moment. On the other hand, Commander Fisher’s squadron-mate Captain Roy R Gee, was on the same flight and states that he emphatically supports Weisheit’s findings. He particularly recalls plotting the enemy’s position himself before the call came to man aircraft, and noted the drastic difference in the solution he and his fellow VB-8 pilots had calculated compared to that ordered by Ring. Gee could not understand why Ring had decided on such a course, but he and his fellow junior officers were in no position to contest it at the time.13
With regard to Major Weisheit’s findings, one will be hard-pressed to point out anything that can be inarguably refuted. To do so would require testimony from a substantial body of eyewitnesses to the battle who are willing to say that Admiral Rodee, Captain Tallman, Captain Guillory, and Chief Woodson are all wrong, as are the number of other supporting facts uncovered by Weisheit in researching his book. That would seem beyond all likelihood.
Several facets of the Battle of Midway have long been the subject of probing analysis and debate, but it was surprising to find that the tracks of the Hornet’s squadrons on the first day of the battle should be included in that group. Major Weisheit’s revelations present a compelling argument for a serious re-examination of what actually happened to all of those aviators on that epic day, and by extension, he leaves us with vexing questions as to why Commander Ring would lead his air group on a course that had no chance of finding the enemy fleet and, having done so, why the official record tells us that he did no such thing. Even if additional research reveals sound tactical justification for a course of 265° true, we will still be left with the official record, wondering why it came to be written as it was.
1. “Air Heroes Broadcast To Nation Reveals Midway Drama,” The Honolulu Advertiser, 15 June 1942.
2. “The Japanese Story of the Battle of Midway” (OPNAV P32-1002), Navy Department, Office of Naval Intelligence, 1947.
3. Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War 11, Volume IV (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1949), 151.
4. Walter Lord, Incredible Victory (New York: Harper & Rowe, 1967), 279.
5. W. J. Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1979), 89-91, and RAdm Edwin T. Layton with Capt Roger Pineau, USNR, Retired, and John Costello, And I Was There; Pearl Harbor and Midway—Breaking the Secrets (Old Saybrook, CT: Konecky & Konecky, 19850, 420-424. Adm Nimitz’ staff and the 14th Naval District’s combat intelligence unit at Pearl Harbor had correctly divined the Japanese attack plan at Midway, hut they had to resort to subterfuge in order to convince the radio intelligence office in Washington (OP-20-G), which insisted that the attack would occur two weeks later than predicted by Nimitz, and probably not at Midway. This “near miss” in critical intelligence did not get significant public exposure until the publication of Holmes’ book 34 years after the end of the war, with additional details provided by Layton six years later.
6. George H. Gay, Sole Survivor (revised edition) (Naples, FL: Midway Publishers, 1986), 113. It should be noted that VT-8 actually had two additional survivors, assigned to a detachment that flew from Midway atoll during the battle. Gay was the sole survivor of the squadron’s planes that launched from the Hornet.
7. Robert J. Cressman, et al, A Glorious Page In Our History: (Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, 1990), 84, and the author’s interview with Capt Roy P. Gee, USN, Retired, one of Ring’s dive bomber pilots during the mission.
8. Cressman, A Glorious Page, 91. Whether Waldron actually broke radio silence is a matter of some disagreement. The author has interviewed several veterans of the Hornet’s air group, most of whom say they heard no such radio transmissions, but a few insist that they did.
9. John B. Lundstrom, The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat From Pearl Harbor to Midway (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1984), 368.
10. Morison, History, 118-119. The key fact in this traditional view is that VT-8 turned right when they broke away from the rest of the air group. See Figure 1.
11. Bowen P. Weisheit, The Last Flight of Ensign C. Markland Kelly, Junior, USNR (Second Edition), (Annapolis: The Ensign C. Markland Kelly Junior Memorial Foundation, Inc., 1996), 88. Separately, Rodee sent a letter to James Sawruk, a researcher who aided Lundstrom on The First Team, stating that course 265 was actually recorded in his flight log. (E-mail, Sawruk to author, June 2005).
12. Gay, Sole Survivor, 113.
13. Statements by Cdr Fisher and Capt Gee are from numerous e-mail exchanges and phone conversations with the author over several months in early 2005.