By 6 April 1945, few shipping targets were left in the fast-dwindling Japanese empire. The day of the torpedo plane had passed. True, each fast carrier still carried several Grumman TBF Avengers—15 on each of the Essex (CV-9)-class carriers and nine on each of the Independence (CVL-22)-class light carriers. But the aircraft’s designation as torpedo-bombers had come to mean only “bomber” as they joined the fighter-bombers and dive bombers in supporting the ground forces ashore at Okinawa and in pounding enemy airfields. Still, the pilots swore by their lumbering “torpeckers” and hoped— though never expected—to use their torpedoes against a major target again.
In fact, Task Force 58 had been thrown on the tactical defensive ever since the Marine Corps and Army had gone ashore at Okinawa five days before as waves of kamikaze suicide planes flung themselves at the 17 fast carriers trying mightily to provide the troops with an aerial umbrella. This very day, two of the four fast carrier task groups braved a massive deluge of suiciders; the carriers’ defensive fighters and antiaircraft guns knocked 249 of them out of the sky.
The Yorktown (CV-10), nicknamed “The Fighting Lady,” refueled and rearmed throughout 6 April well to the east and out of kamikaze range. She had been the pacesetter of the fast carrier task force ever since that post- Pearl Harbor armada had begun the counteroffensive against Japan in the Central Pacific during the autumn of 1943. But the tired crewmen and fliers of Air Group Nine on board were only too happy to miss the fireworks that day.
At sundown, electrifying news from Vice Admiral Marc A. Mitscher, Commander Task Force 58, spread throughout the task force: Elements of the Japanese Fleet were on the move, heading south from Kyushu in the home islands toward Okinawa. Intelligence said the target consisted of the Yamato—the largest battleship in the world at 72,000 tons—escorted by a cruiser or two and as many as ten destroyers.
Eureka! Fresh meat for the torpecker grinder. Still, the pilots and aircrewmen throughout the task force had had little practice at dropping “tin fish” in months, and Torpedo Squadron Nine on the Yorktown was no exception.
As flagship of Rear Admiral Arthur W. Radford, Commander Task Group (CTG) 58.4, “The Fighting Lady” received orders to steam north throughout the night in order to rendezvous at dawn on 7 April with the two other U. S. task groups. (The British task group was not included in the mission.) Admiral Mitscher planned to keep Admiral Radford’s group due east of Okinawa in order to assume the scheduled combat air patrol (CAP) over the island throughout the day. This would place the group farthest south of the Yamato force; thus, Admiral Radford’s strikes against the Yamato force would be launched at a longer range than those of the task groups of Rear Admirals J. J. “Jocko” Clark and Frederick C. Sherman.
Admiral Mitscher instructed the two closer groups to attack the Yamato herself and told Admiral Radford to strike the cruiser. Everyone was to hit the tin cans after disposing of the heavier ships. The Yorktown air operations officer, Lieutenant Commander Cooper “Buck" Bright, and the air group commander. Lieutenant Commander Herbert N. Houck, developed their ship’s attack schedule as the ship sped north before dawn on 7 April. Houck would lead 43 planes of Air Group Nine against the cruiser. Nine F6F Hellcat fighters would fly cover and strafe. Eight Hellcat fighter-bombers were each armed with a 500-pound general purpose bomb, and each of the 13 SB2C Helldiver dive bombers was getting two 1,000- pounders, all but two of them semi-armor-piercing. All 13 of the torpeckers would make the flight.
But Bright’s air plot ticker tape to the ready rooms surprised everyone in Torpedo Nine: “Load with torpedoes.’’
The pilots let out a roar of approval, and one of them chalked a picture of a “fish” on the blackboard. Torpedo Nine skipper Lieutenant Thomas H. “Stets” Stetson remarked, “Take a good look at it, fellows. That’s a torpedo, remember? We haven’t seen one in six months. Do you suppose you still know how to drop ’em?”
Admiral Mitscher wanted the fish to let in water while the bombers let in air and started fires. Stets told his men to arm their torpedoes to run at a depth of ten feet, perfect for killing a cruiser.
The ticker continued, giving the number of aircraft to be sent against the tiny Japanese task force of a dozen or so ships: 386. “The boys stared in amazement” at the massive planned strike, remembered air combat information officer Lieutenant (junior grade) Richard K. Montgomery, “then whooped and hollered.”
“With that many planes,” said Lieutenant (junior grade) Clyde J. “Ugh” Lee of the torpeckers, “there probably won’t be anything left for us to hit when we get there.”
Stets refreshed his men on the fine art of dropping torpedoes; Montgomery went over air-sea rescue procedures; and the pilots quietly put on their flight gear and waited— and waited.
As dawn broke with the customary overcast, the Yorktown sent a flight of fighters to patrol Okinawa. All hands figured that the enemy warships would take advantage of the clouds and run south. At 0830, the word came from an Essex search plane, just off the southwest coast of Kyushu. It was the Yamato, along with one Aga/io-class light cruiser—actually the Yahagi—plus eight cans. Two PBM Mariner flying boats began to shadow the force. Between 0915 and 1015, Admirals Clark and Sherman got off their strikes—some 300 planes.
At 1000, Herb Houck told Coop Bright that his group was ready to go.
“Herb, wait a minute,” Bright replied. “Let me tell you something. I’ve been out here 20 months. I will bet you any amount of money that that contact position is wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“Herb, if you come across a group with the Yamato coming down, you’d be astounded. The biggest ship in the world! So you get excited. Anybody would. I’d get excited. My God, there’s the prize! So you call it in. But do you really know your position? I’ve seen an awful lot of positions come back here to air operations, and they’ve been wrong. Including the Marianas Turkey Shoot. We stretched ’em out there till they were throwing away life preservers, charts, everything, to be light enough to get back. So, wait. Wait!”
Houck was incredulous. ‘‘What do you mean, ‘Wait’?” “First of all,” Coop argued, “every ship will be launching on this thing. Yet, they won’t be armed exactly right, because we didn’t expect to attack this big a ship. Are you sure you’re all set?”
By now the executive officer, Commander M. T. Evans, was yelling over the intercom to air plot, “When are you going to be ready to launch aircraft?”
Houck: “Buck, we’re gonna lose out!”
Bright: “We’re the farthest ship from the Yamato—260 miles—a helluva long flight, and in poor weather. Now, 'f they’ve got the wrong position, and you get up to that Position, you can’t make a search. You gotta come back.” Everyone was excited, including the captain, Thomas S- Combs, whom his friends called “Theda” after silent Elm star Theda Bara. The normally unexcitable Combs summoned his air ops officer to the bridge. Coop scrambled up the ladders from air plot and was puffing by the Erne he faced the skipper.
“Skinhead,” said Theda Combs, “what the hell is going on?”
“Captain,” Bright answered, “let me tell you what we’re going to do.” Between gasps, he related his reason- '"g to Combs.
“O.K., I’ll buy it,” Combs said, finally, “but by God something’s got to happen!”
At the same time. Admiral Radford was shouting from 'he flag bridge, “Why don’t you launch?”
All of a sudden, the PBM shadowing the Yamato sent in a new position report. The ship had maneuvered 40-or-so "riles in another direction, hoping to elude what her commander knew was coming. Bright was correct. Air plot transmitted the corrected position to the ready rooms.
“We’re ready!” Coop informed pri-fly and then dictated the electrifying word to the ready rooms over the ticker: “Pilots, man your planes. Hubba! Hubba! Hubba!”
The torpecker jockeys bolted from their chairs, chanting in unison, “Hubba! Hubba! Hubba!”
At 1038, the Yorktown began launching her 43 planes— more than half an hour behind the other groups. The deckload strike of the Intrepid (CV-11) was waiting for them; its air group commander, Commander J. J. Hyland, would lead the flight. And the light carriers Langley (CVL-27) and Independence each provided six torpeckers and eight fighters. The course was set at 350° (T) for an estimated 260 miles.
By 1100, all of Air Group Nine’s strike planes had passed out of sight of the Yorktown, which settled down to lunch. It would be five or six hours before the planes returned, so no one was holding his breath. Nevertheless, all hands were charged.
The first target combat air patrol returned from the skies over Okinawa with four enemy Val suiciders under its belt, and the regular morning CAPs over the task force had been recovered, as well. At 1155, the next CAP took off and quickly intercepted and splashed a Judy bomber approaching the carriers.
Suddenly, at 1210, general quarters was sounded.
As the crew raced to battle stations, a large column of smoke was rising on the horizon. Men running across the flight deck paused to look at it.
Presently, the word came in. It was the Hancock (CV- 19) in Sherman’s group. A kamikaze had planted a bomb on her flight deck and followed it straight in, igniting parked planes and part of the hangar and inflicting more than 150 casualties. Through heroic damage control efforts, however, the Hancock had everything in hand by 1230.
The clouds broke over the Yorktown to reveal a crystal blue sky, and an eerie silence enveloped the ship for several minutes. The quiet was broken by returning planes, and Condition One Easy was set.
The strike force’s estimated arrival time at the target was about 1330, and, in fact, at 1305 the planes of TG 58.4 did arrive at the Japanese task force’s position—the one reported at 1000. No ships. Bright was right. Someone had erred. Commander Hyland ordered a course change to 270°, figuring the Yamato had swung westward. The airborne radar operators in the TBFs stayed glued to their scopes.
“Contact!”
At 1315, the radars showed blips on the surface 20 miles ahead. The flight pressed on and sighted the enemy ships after ten minutes.
The ships were scattered but generally clustered into two main groups. The Yamato was closest, along with a screen of four destroyers. About five miles to the northwest was what appeared to be the battered hulk of a light cruiser (actually a destroyer). Five miles beyond that was the light cruiser (Yahagi) attended by a can alongside.
Hyland prepared to take his Intrepid planes in against the Yamato, which was running southwesterly at a brisk 20 knots in spite of the fact that she showed a fire amidships. She was also trailing oil from two bomb hits and a torpedo hit—from Clark’s and Sherman’s planes during the preceding hour. Hyland ordered the Yorktown's flight to tackle the cruiser, which was dead in the water, her stem damaged by earlier attacks and a vast oil slick spreading from her port side amidships.
The ceiling was still low, at 2,000 feet, as the Intrepid's aircraft peeled off in a wild, disorganized attack on the superbattleship. Maintaining order was impossible at such a low altitude. The Langley's planes followed the Intrepid's, while Houck took the Yorktown's out to orbit beyond gun range, and to look for possible ships hiding under the scattered rain squalls. Houck had other concerns: his F6F was having engine trouble and gas suction difficulties.
Finally, Hyland radioed Houck, “We’ve hit the battleship pretty hard. A few more torpedoes should roll her over.” At least five fish had hit squarely to slow down the Yamato to between 10 and 15 knots and had given her a list of 10° to port. Stets, leading his own division of six orbiting torpeckers, immediately asked Houck’s permission to let his guys have a crack at her.
“Can you split your force?” Houck answered, “If so, put half against the battleship and half on the cruiser.”
“Yes, sir!”
Stets broke away his six Avengers from the formation, while Houck searched for a hole in the clouds through which to lead his Hellcats, Helldivers, and seven TBFs for
halfway decent dives on the cruiser. He found one and managed to get up to 4,500 feet without losing sight of the target. Accurate and intense attack fire was being generated by both the Yamato and Yahagi groups.
On Houck’s order, the eight fighters went screaming in first at 1330, with machine guns blazing in an attempt to suppress the flak for the upcoming bombing and torpedo runs. The eight Hellcat fighter-bombers came next; two of them scored direct hits with their 500-pounders, and all strafed after bomb release.
Bomber skipper Lieutenant Tony Schneider climbed into the clouds to hide from the flak and to line up a fore- and-aft glide run on the Yahagi. By now, she was a sitting duck. No one should miss. Before reaching the attack position, however, Lieutenant Harry W. Worley suddenly broke away with his section and commenced diving on the port beam of the target. His bomb missed, as did those of Ensigns J. J. Bell and William W. Bowers, and they pulled out to head for the rendezvous.
Meanwhile, the remaining ten bombers had broken through the clouds in 40°-50° no-flap glides and in quick succession released their 1,000-pounders. Perhaps eight scored direct hits from the 20 bombs unleashed. Even as the last were still falling, “Admiral Ugh” Lee brought his seven torpeckers through low cumulus clouds with a radar letdown in two lines abreast for full broadside drops.
What a setup—a textbook attack! One by one, the pilots pulled their release cords: Lieutenants Lee and Stewart Bass, Lieutenant (junior grade) Robert D. Fulton, and Ensigns J. D. Page, William W. Patterson, John E. Tar- water, and Leon Frankel. Though Lee’s and Page’s torpedoes did not release, the other fish dropped and ran “hot. straight, and normal.”
Bass looked back: “I suddenly saw all five torpedoes hit—bang! bang! bang! bang! bang! For a moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then she began erupting. Flames belched through holes in her deck, and great holes were blown in her portside.”
Jets of water shot up through the holes topside, and “in a matter of seconds the whole ship was enveloped in swirling clouds of smoke.” The Yahagi made a sudden half-roll and plunged from sight, leaving a sea strewn with fiery bits of wreckage. The time was 1405.
Bombers and torpeckers recovered through a cone of antiair fire from the screening destroyer Isokaze. Lee and Page, still carrying fish, came around for second runs, but now against the can, plowing along at 25 knots. Neither pilot knew of the other’s situation; each thought he was making a solo run.
“This may be our neck,” Page told his two crewmen, “but we’re going down after that can.” Weighing heavily on him was the realization that this combat hop was his 13th and that he was in the Number 13 position in the squadron formation.
Ugh Lee beat him to it for a run, he recalled, “I’ll never forget. The cruiser was bad enough, but then there had been seven of us and those Japs had to split their fire. But that can had me bore-sighted—and with nothing else to fire on. Once more I tried to release, but the torpedo wouldn’t budge. . . .
“My heart sank when I realized I’d have to make still another run. As I flashed over the destroyer’s bow, I could see the tracers spraying up, inching toward me. Just as it was about to intercept me, I’d jink a bit and dodge and twist. That would throw the gunners off for a moment, but then they’d pick me up again.”
At that moment, Lee heard Page call for fighter cover and turned to see Page heading in toward the Isokaze’s bow, jinking so violently that Page’s gunner John W. Rodd—in Rodd’s words—“was bouncing around in that turret until I thought I’d be thrown clear out.” Lee echoed Page’s call for fighters and roared in for a simultaneous drop with Page. Both torpedoes plummeted free.
As the waterspouts rose, the destroyer tried to “comb” them by turning in the direction of the approaching torpedoes. Lee’s fish missed by ten feet, but Page’s smacked into the starboard quarter near the after gun mount. Both men looked back to see the flak being drawn away from them by their strafing pals.
In addition to the Hellcats, a Helldiver was boring straight into the Isokaze’s flak, its 20-mm. wing cannons taking the destroyer’s deck. It was Harry Worley. Bomber Jack Bell tried to join Worley, but his guns jammed, leaving “the Whorl” to absorb the enemy’s fire alone.
Halfway through his glide, Worley’s plane took a hit and started to stream smoke and flame. He pulled out of his glide, but the plane lurched abruptly into a 60° dive toward the can. It did not recover but crashed off the starboard bow. Both Worley and gunner Earl W. Ward perished instantly; some of Worley’s squadron-mates believed he had been trying to make a suicide crash at the last moment. In any case, the Isokaze ground to a halt from Page’s direct hit. She was so badly damaged from the many hits she would have to be scuttled.
The loss of the popular Worley instilled fury in the hearts and minds of his pals. As they rendezvoused, they noticed a large whaleboat and many survivors floating in the spot vacated by the cruiser. Houck’s fighters and bombers formed a strafing circle and began gunning down the survivors with their 50 calibers and 20-millimeters. Ensign Bill Bowers, the newest replacement pilot in VB-9, was sickened by this act of barbarism: “I chose not to charge my guns, let alone fire them. I did not join in the pattern, kept my spacing and made dry runs.”
Meanwhile, the giant Yamato was maneuvering frantically in a hard turn to port to avoid more attackers. The last Intrepid and Langley planes had planted three more bombs into her, and Stets passed the word about the new target to his division mates.
“Pilot to gunner,” Ensign William J. Collins called over his intercom to Harvey S. Ewing, “We’ve been ordered to go in on the Yamato. Change the depth settings on the torpedo from a light cruiser to a battleship.” As senior aviation ordnanceman in the flight, Ewing had the information on a pad strapped to his thigh and gave it to Collins: Change the setting from 10 to 20 or 22 feet. Collins relayed the data to the other five planes.
Then, as Ewing remembered it, “I slid down from the turret, climbed over the back of the radioman, Jack Craven, and opened a small hatch to reach the bomb bay. Using a key like a rollerskate key, I felt for the lug and then made the necessary turns to make the fish run deeper. I then moved to the rear of the plane in order to feed radar-fouling aluminum strips called ‘window’ out the hatch as fast as I could, while the radioman gave the pilot radar readings to help him maintain the proper altitude and course on the torpedo run.”
The same act was carried out on all six torpeckers as Stetson led them in a wide circling turn astern of the Yamato well outside of her antiaircraft gun range so he could survey his prey. Her reduced speed of eight knots and her 10° list to port thrilled him. “One thought,” Stets said later, “ran through my mind: What a set-up for a starboard run!” The list had exposed the Yamato's starboard underbelly beneath her massive armor belt—an ideal target for a torpedo attack.
And yet, “Old Stets” knew he could not make an orthodox approach; the battlewagon’s guns and those of her four escorting destroyers were throwing up a barrage of flak at the low clouds through which the planes had to emerge while making their runs. As Stetson put it, “I figured I’d better climb into the clouds until I got enough altitude, then come diving down at high speed, pop out, and make a hit-and-run attack.”
Continuing to watch the Yamato, which in fact had lost steering control from a torpedo hit in her rudder, he swung his division four-and-a-half miles off her stem, and then around to a position off her port beam, where he took his planes up into the clouds to a point—still four-and-a-half miles off her starboard bow. Ship and planes could not see each other, but the clouds were thin enough for the planes to see one another, and maintain a tight formation.
At 4,500 feet, Stetson began his descent. The breakthrough at 2,000 feet was two miles from the Yamato— too far out. So the skipper pulled back on his stick, and his five teammates followed him back up into the overcast sky. They all came on again, planning for a line-abreast run by all six planes.
The return into the clouds, however, caused the formation to spread out a bit. When they entered clear sky again, 2,500 yards from the Yamato, only four of the torpeckers were still in rough line abreast—left to right, Willie Collins, Stetson, Lieutenant (junior grade) William K. Gibson, Jr., and Ensign John H. Kirwin. Lieutenants (junior grade) John W. Carter and Grady B. Jean trailed behind them.
“Here we go!” Collins announced to his crewmen. Harvey Ewing recalled, “I was scared nearly out of my wits as we flew at a breathtaking 300 miles an hour toward the starboard side of the ship.” He threw “window” into the slipstream as fast as he could to foul any radar-directed guns. “In quick glances out the side windows, I could see bursts of antiaircraft shells as they exploded closer and closer to our plane.”
Directly in front of the six Avengers, the massive Yamato turned hard to port, exposing the full length of her hull and underside.
“Hit her in the belly—now!” Stetson commanded.
Collins and his gunner believed they were “flying straight toward the rising sun flag atop the superstructure" when radio/radarman Craven, hunched over his scope, yelled, “Fire torpedo!”
The four lead planes had accelerated from 220 to 280 knots in their descent, their pilots aiming between the starboard bow and beam. Stetson’s tactics were flawless, and, at 100 yards from the target. Stetson, Collins, Gibson, and Kirwin dropped perfectly from 800 feet up.
Each TBF lurched forward as its fish fell away. Collins banked steeply, standing the plane on one wing directly over the Yamato's stack for what seemed like an eternity.
“Move it! Move it!” Ewing screamed, fearful that “our torpedo-bomber might slip right down into the gaping hole of the stack.” Veering southward, the four Avengers passed just 500 yards over the bow of the great battleship and between two destroyers.
Coming along behind them were Carter and Jean on individual runs. As they bored in, they saw three distinct explosions between amidships and the bow at the waterline; two of the fish struck so close together that they created a single blast.
Jean aimed his torpedo at the Yamato's bow, and Carter swung toward the stem. Both released. Their fish ran hot and true. Jean’s erupted at the bow, and Carter’s cut across the battleship’s wake to slam into the port quarter near the fantail. The time was 1417.
The Yamato pressed on, her gun batteries and those of three of her consorts blazing away at Stetson’s division. Three of the six TBFs were hit. In Collins’s, a 25-mm. shell rammed into the fuselage six inches from the main gas tank but did not detonate; it stayed wedged there.
The men in the six torpeckers looked back—after getting out of antiair range—to behold the Yamato listing further to port, 20° now. She started to heel over on her beam ends. Abruptly, at 1423, some five or six minutes after taking the six fish, she rolled over on one side. A violent explosion tore her apart.
A column of flame shot straight up through the clouds, 2,000 to 3,000 feet in the sky, followed by a billowing mushroom of smoke. Houck rapidly snapped the shutters °f his camera to record the death of the battleship— symbolically, too, of all battleships as the capital ships of navies.
As the smoke cleared, only a mammoth oil slick marked the largest warship’s grave—and that of more than 3,000 crewmen.
Houck collected his fighters, bombers, and torpeckers ten miles south of the remaining four Japanese destroyers; the other four had gone down with the battleship and cruiser. The Intrepid's planes had already departed, now followed by the Yorktown's. Houck nursed his faulty engine all the way back, and his pilots conserved the last half of their gas supplies.
Houck called the ship, which, however, had acquired concerns of her own. The starboard catapult was out of order, and while the mid-afternoon combat air patrol of eight fighters was being launched on the port cat, puffs of flak appeared around the horizon from the screen and the other task groups.
“Bogey, 240, 16 miles!”
Captain Combs ordered, “Hard left!”
The last fighters took off, and a spare was fastened to the cat, its port wing folded to make room for firing the five-inch starboard gun. The ships on the horizon opened up again and splashed two bogeys, and many flight deck airdales ran toward the starboard bow for a look-see.
It was now 1430, and soon word came that a Yorktown fighter had splashed a Frances suicider near the formation.
At around 1500 the voice of the ship’s chaplain, Father Joseph N. Moody, came over the bull horn: “Your attention, please! A flash report from one of our planes attacking the Jap fleet reports one battleship and one heavy cruiser definitely sunk, four destroyers smoking!”
No one responded. No cheering. No excitement. Okinawa was an exhausting campaign. The Yamato fight was so far away. Everyone was pooped. “Roger,” murmured a swab on the flag bridge.
Now, general quarters again!
All hands sprang into action, but the bogey was knocked down some ten miles out. The “secure” sounded.
The planes returned at 1630 with just enough fuel to stay in the landing circles, come aboard, and taxi forward. The flight logged 5.7 hours, and the torpeckers had but 12 to 32 gallons of gas left in each of their tanks.
Bill Gibson grinned as he led the torpedo pilots into the ready room: “We sank a battleship! Honest, fellows! It blew up to the clouds!”
The others were equally jubilant, especially when the photos confirmed everything they said. In the Torpedo Nine aircrewmen’s ready room, someone asked Rodd, Page’s gunner, what it felt like to see the Yamato blow. “Say,” answered Rodd, “I wouldn’t take a million bucks for what I saw.”
Houck ran to Bright with a confession, “Buck, you were right!” The squadron commanding officers came in also and told how they took their time and then went in. “Bam! Bam! Bam! And then she went up!”
It was “The Fighting Lady’s” finest hour, and the ship’s company showed its appreciation to the torpedo air crews. Eight crewmen were brought into a mess deck where hash was being served for dinner. Ewing recalled: “The chow line was stopped and while a sizeable segment of the ship’s crew waited, the cooks served us steak. It was a bit hairy dining that way while the hash was again dished out.”
Then all hands settled down to await an expected night kamikaze attack, and the war went on. But it was over for the Yamato and for the aerial torpedo, as well. The aerial torpedo had been used in the last classic textbook attack against a major warship under way. Four months later, Japan surrendered, and the torpecker passed into history.