"Fly Your Eggs Right Down Their Stacks": A Dauntless Pilot at the Battle of Midway

by Wade Young

The air in the ready room is so tense you can cut chunks of it with a knife. The speech from the flight officer has stretched nerves taut. Now we wait for the whistle. Bulkheads vibrate with activity. Hurrying feet pound the decks. Throbbing pumps flood tanks with 100-octane fuel and the whine of the elevator lifting planes to the flight deck is a continuous high-pitched drone that tightens hands into hard knots of bone and muscle.

The hands on the white clock inch towards 0700. We were here when it read 0330. Two false alarms haven't helped to ease tension, either.

Silence. It comes suddenly. Whispering voices clip off. Heads lift to the square speaker. Is this it? Fighter, bomber and torpedo plane crews shift uneasily in their chairs. Cigarettes are crushed. It's so quiet now you can hear the sound of breathing.

The loudspeaker cracks. A harsh voice blares, "Pilots, man your planes!" A shrill whistle follows. Chairs scrape. Talk crackles as we streak up from the guts of the Enterprise and hit the hot steel deck.

Engines sputter. Crewmen are still snugging up live torpedoes under the Devastators, the first they've ever carried. I climb onto the wing of my Dauntless. The paint's chipped. Oil streaks ooze from under the engine's nacelle. Patches mark the spots where bullets have chewed into her.

The aircraft carrier sways into a four-knot wind from the southeast. Far below the flight deck is the blue Pacific, calm except for the violent wake waves churned up by powerful turbines.

I choke on the slip-stream from the idling engine. I get set, pull the straps tight. My rear seat man clambers up to his cubbyhole and checks his .30 caliber machine gun.

The Wildcats buzz off first. They taxi up to the catapults, dip under the bow and then rise in a sweeping curve.

Now that the long awaited moment is here I don't feel well. The flight officer's speech keeps hammering back. Efforts to conceal emotion had failed and now his words come slamming through my brain:

The Japs have it all their way. Land-based Army, Navy and Marine planes went in to attack and got chewed to pieces. First three hours we lost seventeen Buffalos and Wildcats. Five out of six Avengers splashed. Out of sixteen dive bombers eight returned to Midway. Heavy Army bombers flew in numbers too small to execute good high-level bomb patterns.

I watch the Devastators take off. My hands are sweaty on the stick thinking about the flight officer's sum-up.

The Japs' objective is to wipe us out and take Midway. If they succeed, Hawaii is lost. Then you can figure them steaming into San Francisco Bay.

He ended by saying it was up to our carrier and her two sisters, the Yorktown and Hornet, to stop the whole damn Japanese Fleet.

On top of all that, a lousy bit of scuttlebutt has us chewing nails to our elbows. We're launching two hours too soon. The opposing forces are 240 miles apart, which means there's a damn good chance we'll run out of gas before we get back to the carrier. Spruance's reasoning is simple, but it probably means death for us. He figures Nagumo is ready for a second strike on Midway and that if we stab him now we'll catch him with all his planes on deck rearming.

But we're still beyond normal carrier plane round-trip range and no matter what kind of light you use to examine the thing it adds up to one gut-retching fact:

This is a suicide flight.

The deck crew motions me to the catapult. They hook me on. The landing officer gives me the sign for full throttle and I lay it in. The engine screams. He drops his hands. I dig into the seat and brace myself as the plane surges forward. I buzz off, dip and then climb up fast.

At thirty thousand feet we rendezvous with planes from the Hornet and fly in V's of V's formation. We bank towards Nagumo's last known position. We're almost at ceiling. The air is sharp and filled with white cottony clouds. We can see about 95,000 square miles of water and all of it is empty.

We're a formidable striking force—twenty-nine Devastator torpedo bombers now flying below us at twenty thousand feet and covered by twenty Wildcat fighters. Dauntless dive bombers number sixty-seven. We look good now, but we haven't met any Japs yet. Suddenly, black specks appear on the horizon. We close in fast. The specks take shape and become the Japanese Task Force—four carriers surrounded by Japanese cruisers and tin cans. The carriers are the veterans of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor six months earlier. The Kaga, Akagi, Soryu and Hiryu. And Spruance is right: There are so many planes topside you can't see the red meatball painted on the flight decks.

The time is 0930. The date, 4 June 1942. The leader of Torpedo Squadron 8 sends fifteen Devastators on a low torpedo run. They'll blast Akagi out of the ocean.

But it doesn't happen that way. Nagumo must have been waiting for us. Dozens of Zeros scream down from high altitudes. Their guns spit death. Below, warships vomit anti-aircraft fire that stretches out eight miles. Our Devastators are caught between murderous fire from above and below at the same time.

The first torpedo bomber skips over the water and drops his fish 450 yards off Akagi's port. It falls wide. The plane takes a hit and spews smoke. His wings are weakened. He takes another hit, and another. The plane erupts into a ball of fire and disintegrates.

The second bomber gets a wing sheared and splashes. The third blows up, splintering the plane into a million pieces. Three Zekes jump the fourth but the pilot shakes them off and continues his dive.

One after the other, the Devastators roll in low to deal the Akagi a knock-out punch and get clobbered out of the sky. All fifteen of them without a single hit!

At about the same time fourteen torpedo bombers take on the Kaga. But it's bloody murder all over again. Zeros flying three times faster swoop down and smother them. The ones they miss are caught in barrages from warships. Most don't even have a chance to get into position to drop their loads. And again there are no hits.

Torpedo Squadron 3 from the Yorktown—twelve Devastators—goes in to kill the Kaga. Gunners are waiting for them. So are the Zeros. Only four of the bombers are able to limp home.

What about our Wildcats? It's sickening to watch the Zeros out-run, out-maneuver them. They dance around our fighters like the Wildcats are dangling from strings. Our pilots fight like hell but they know they don't stand a chance against the better planes. All they can hope to do is to keep the bastards busy until the bombers make their runs.

A ray of hope sparks us when we see six Avengers from the Hornet take up their positions to fly the gantlet on the Akagi. They're here to battle-test the new ship against the obsolete TBD-1 Devastator. Now we'll see the tide turn.

They divide into two groups. The first three glide in on Akagi's starboard. They present as small a target as possible as they make their approach. The torpedoes are dropped. Looks like they'll de-gut the Japanese carrier for sure. It's Nagumo's flagship. He'll be blown to hell with his crew.

He orders a full turn. The ship is veering away from the three deadly streaks in the water. I can almost see the bastard laughing at us.

Anti-aircraft fire blows up and disintegrates the three Avengers. Two in the second group waver. Tracers streak towards them as they fight for altitude. And above at a safe distance are three Zeros, waiting for them.

One Avenger rolls over on his back and splashes upside down, sending a white geyser fifty feet in the air. The other skips like a flat rock over a pond and settles finally without exploding. The pilot climbs out of the cockpit. He's holding onto a seat cushion with one hand. The Zeros bank wide and come in low over his head. Their guns chatter. Slugs mark a white line. The pilot's face disappears. The cushion bobbles alone and the blue water turns a murky scarlet.

The last Avenger is also in trouble. His guns seem to be jammed. The turret is shattered and the tunnel gun looks like it is blanked by a dangling tail wheel. He doesn't seem able to dodge, which means his elevator control is sliced and the hydraulic system smashed. A landing wheel, ripped out of the belly, hangs down. The bomb-bay doors are open. They're cutting his speed, but I guess he can't close them. Zeros are on his tail as he wings back to the Hornet.

Now it's our turn. The squadron leader breaks radio silence, tells us to nose over in a seventy-degree dive and "Damn it, make every one count."

There are no defending Zeros up here to interfere with us. The torpedo bombers have sucked them down to water level. Japanese anti-aircraft is set for low-level defense. They'll have to re-adjust and they don't have the time.

The thought that comes to me is that thirty-five torpedo bombers have sacrificed themselves so that we can complete our bomb run with a minimum of danger.

We start our dive, thirty-two Dauntlesses slashing downward now from twenty thousand feet, our engines screaming. Every pilot's eyes are fixed on the Akagi with forty of her planes on deck. Our orders are to launch at five hundred yards out. The first bomb is a near miss, lands ten yards from the bridge. The second 500-pounder crashes through the elevator amidships and detonates her torpedoes on the hangar deck. The third explodes the planes sitting on the meatball ensign. The Akagi is smoking from stem to stern. Japs are leaping over the sides. Fresh explosions rip out her guts. She's beginning to list.

The Soryu is under attack. Dive bombers are releasing one-thou­sand pounders from an altitude of twenty-five hundred feet. The carrier is hit fore, mid and aft. Squatting planes are hurled from her deck. Sheets of flame sweep across the entire ship, catching Japanese sailors before they can scramble for cover. You can see the fire belch at them as they try to run. You can see their clothes ignite and some leap off, looking like smoking torches as they make their descent to the water.

The Kaga catches her hell from Yorktown bombers just showing up at the scene. Dauntlesses nose over at 14,500 feet and come down screaming like blue streaks of lightning. The first is a direct hit on the Kaga's bridge. Anybody there is chopped meat now. The next three hits chew up the flight deck and everything on it. White hot steel buckles. Men and planes are catapulted into the sea. Fires burn out of control. Great clouds of black smoke rise into the blue sky. Number three is finished. Now for number four, the Hiryu. But she's gone.

The carrier has slipped away during the heat of battle. We climb high for a better look, but see nothing: I have one 500-pounder left. It was for the Hiryu.

My rear seat man lets go with a long burst. I turn around and see two Zeros crawling up my back. More Zeros barrel in and scatter our formation. Planes in Scout Bomber 6 are all over the sky, each with at least two Zeros circling it like angry wasps. They have reason to be angry—we just wrote their death warrant by blasting their carriers. With no place to land they're going to make sure they don't ditch alone.

My gunner trains his sights on the closest Zero and lets him have four long bursts. The Japanese plane falters. The nose dips slightly and the wings are pock-marked with bullet holes. He goes into a spin under us.

The other Zero veers off to attack my wingman on the right. The pilot is nursing a smoking engine. He's got two Japs to worry about, doesn't need a third. My gunner whips his weapon in a ninety-degree turn and lays in slugs. Now I see why our Jap wants my wingman.

The pilot is climbing out of the cockpit. They like nothing better than to make a dog fight a personal thing. They don't want to destroy planes; they want to see Americans bleed and die. So now all three Zeros bear down on the pilot as he stands on the wing ready to bail out. Slugs chop into him. His flying suit is ripped apart. Blood streaks spray from his body.

He twists around, is slammed against the fuselage. In the few seconds he stands there he's cut to pieces. The thing that falls into the water is a chunk of red meat.

The white hot rage I feel is shared by my gunner. His weapon never stops now. The metal must be glowing red. His bullets sweep across the three Zeros on our starboard. I can see them knitting the canopies. The Jap in the first plane slaps his hands over his face. Blood turns his fingers red. He slumps forward.

Before the second one can start a climb, slugs eat into his engine and foul it up. Black smoke smothers the pilot's visibility. The third one is already aloft and out of range. My gunner concentrates on knocking the second one out of the sky. And he'll have to do it before the third one gets back.

A short burst into the black smoke hits a bull's eye. You can almost hear the bastard screaming. When the smoke clears you see his mouth wide open and blood pouring down the left side of his face. The plane loses altitude and then he's standing on his nose. Just as he splashes the engine blows up. The white fountain of water turns orange. When the spray settles all you can see are small pieces of junk.

About two thousand yards off my port a pilot and his rear seat man are floating down under white silk. They'll make it all right. Spruance has promised to send search parties out. The pilot will inflate his life raft as soon as it's safe to do so and our PBYs from Midway will pick them up.

But one vengeful Jap changes all that. White silk attracts him. He drops almost vertically and opens up on the defenseless men. I watch them writhe, their legs kicking frantically. Then they go limp and dangle from their shroud lines.

Bastards! I glance back at the gunner. He's beckoning the Zero closer. He looks at me and shakes his head. Then he points downward. I look. A Japanese tin can is directly under us. He yells, "Drop your egg on it, sir!"

I nod. "Right down their stack!"

A screech from above jerks his head up. He turns white. The third Zero is making his play now and coming down hard. Japanese slugs slam into his face. Blood splatters. The stump of a head sags out of sight.

My hands tremble on the stick. The Zero sweeps by, levels off under me and then goes into a vertical roll. I'm next. But while he's climbing I drop down on the Japanese destroyer. I start my descent at eighteen thousand feet and give her full throttle.

The Jap is already on my tail. His bullets tear into my cockpit and destroy the instrument panel. The crew on the tin can are racing around to get their guns into position. Behind me, the Zero is determined to finish me off before I drop my egg. I bear down hard on the stick. I'm doing two hundred knots, or close to it. The engine is screaming like a Banshee. I'm flying a dead man to hell and maybe two—but I'll be damned if I'll let the Jap bastard splash me before I can unsling my five-hundred-pounder.

Pom-poms splatter the air. Black pock marks erupt all around me. Tracers slice so close I can feel their heat. A jagged hole appears in my left wing, made by shrapnel. The Zero figures it's too hot to tail me now and goes aloft. I'm a dead man, anyway. I can't get through this kind of fire.

A 20-mm shell explodes at my left rudder pedal and takes part of my foot. Blood spurts from my shattered leg. The pain is like a hot poker being rammed up from the sole. A sliver of steel slices across the flesh on my forehead and drains blood into my eyes. A slug comes close enough to rip off my throat microphone. My plane is losing power but I've got her on a steady course for that Jap stack and nothing short of an exploding engine is going to keep me from making a score.

I'm heading into their gun barrels. The crew are in my sights but my .30 calibers are jammed. The Jap captain is jumping up and down on the bridge and shaking his fist at me. Five hundred yards… four hundred… three hundred… at two hundred I press the bomb release. The blast concussion shudders the Dauntless. I jerk back hard on the stick. I know I can't climb. All I want to be able to do is straighten out of the dive. I pull over on the port side and do a flipper turn.

Instead of gaining altitude, I'm losing it. At wave crest level four Zeros pounce on me. My left aileron is broken. A seam of holes is stitched across both wings. A slug destroys my oxygen hose. My engine is smoking furiously. The last Zero finishes off whatever controls I have left.

I pancake on the water. The plane skips and jolts hell out of me until the nose digs into the brine. The hot engine sizzles. Water floods in all around me and I flip back the canopy. The plane sinks from under me. I struggle to the surface and grab a piece of flotsam.

My foot wound feels like a thousand needles are pricking it. Blood is still running into my eyes, giving everything a reddish haze. My life raft goes down with the plane. The blood I'm gushing is certain to attract sharks.

A mighty roar above me starts my heart hammering. For a second I think Zeros are coming down to strafe me. But the sound is actually coming from four Dauntlesses. They're after the tin can. My egg crippled it, now they'll kill it.

"Down the stacks!"

The words are out before I realize how insignificant my voice is in this grinding roar of engines and the answering anti-aircraft fire. All four dive bombers sound like they are gasping for fuel. But they come on strong in a sixty-degree dive. The first one jettisons her egg on the forward deck near the bow. You can hear her guts retching and straining to pull up and she does, just barely missing the Japanese ensign.

The explosion blows the deck off. A solid pillar of fire shoots up. The next bomb strikes the tin can amidships. The next crumples the stem and the last one adds the final touch of misery. The ship is shrouded with black smoke and flames are leaping from deck to deck. Japs are screaming and running around like black bugs. Davits are smashed, so they have to jump in the drink. Debris falls around me. Yellow bodies float by, some with their faces wiped away.

I look up at the bombers. They're headed back to the Enterprise but they won't make it. Their engines are already beginning to sputter. But they'll be picked up by Catalinas… like I am, four hours later.

Lt. Cmdr. Wade McClusky was the right man in the right place at the right time to lead the Enterprise Air Group into battle that morning. He was a 42 year old Annapolis trained career naval officer and pilot. In the early carrier raids by Admiral Halsey against the Japanese held Marshall Islands he flew the Wildcat F4F fighter plane. He was one of the Navy's best fighter pilots. On March 21st he was designated Air Group Commander for the Enterprise. As such for the Battle of Midway he flew the Dauntless SBD dive bomber. The SBD was a more stable platform for command and had greater range than the F4F. After pulling out of his dive on the Kaga, McClusky was attacked by two Japanese Zero fighters. As a skilled fighter pilot himself he was able to dog fight the Zeros for ten minutes until his gunner shot down one and the other quit. His SBD was shot up, the instrument panel smashed, and he suffered seven wounds. Still he landed safely back on the Enterprise. More than any other individual Wade McClusky deserves the major credit for the success at Midway.

 

Right down their stacks! A U.S. Navy Douglas SBD Dauntless releasing a bomb. Note the extended trailing edge dive brakes.

Midway Atoll, with Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers in flight over it. (May be a composite picture—certainly retouched.)

SBD Dauntless goes into its dive-bombing run.

Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber in a dive with dive brakes deployed.

A U.S. Navy Douglas SBD-3 Dauntless of Bombing Squadron VB-3 pictured in flight with Lt. Harold S. Bottomley, Jr., and AMM2c Daniel F. Johnson aboard. It is the same aircraft they flew during the Battle of Midway in June 1942 from the aircraft carriers USS Yorktown (CV-5) and USS Enterprise (CV-6), although it was then marked "B-10." Bottomley and Johnson participated in the successful attacks on the Japanese carriers Soryu and Hiryu on 4 June 1942, flying "B-10."

Radioman-Gunner of an SBD Dauntless aims his plane's twin .30 caliber machine guns.

SBD in a bombing dive, 1942.

Douglas SBD-3 Dauntless.

U.S. Navy flight deck personnel disengage the tailhook of a bomb-laden Douglas SBD-3 Dauntless of Bombing Squadron Six (VB-6) from an arresting wire aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CV-6). Note the diagonal tail stripes to assist the Landing Signals Officer when bringing the planes aboard. A "B15" (BuNo 4542), with Ensign George H. Goldsmith, pilot, and Radioman 1st Class James W. Patterson, Jr. landed on board USS Yorktown (CV-5) on 4 June 1942 during the Battle of Midway. This plane, damaged during the attack on the Japanese aircraft carrier Kaga that morning, landed on Yorktown as it was low on fuel. It was later lost with the carrier.