All Hell Let Loose_ The World at War 1939-1945 - Max Hastings [157]
The Devastators ploughed doggedly towards their targets at their best speed of a hundred knots, until each wave in turn was shot to pieces and plunged into the sea. A bomber gunner heard Waldron talking over the radio as he led his planes in: ‘Johnny One to Johnny Two … How’m I doing Dobbs? … Attack immediately … There’s two fighters in the water … My two wingmen are going in the water.’ Waldron himself was last seen attempting to escape from his flaming plane. After the first wave had attacked, the Zeroes’ group leader reported laconically: ‘All fifteen enemy torpedo-bombers shot down.’ Many of the next wave were destroyed while manoeuvring to achieve an attack angle as the Japanese carriers swung wildly to avoid them. A despairing American gunner whose weapon jammed fired his .45 automatic pistol at a pursuing Zero.
George Gay, who flew from the Hornet at the controls of a Devastator, had a reputation in his squadron as a Texas loudmouth, but proved its only survivor. Shot down in the sea with a bullet wound and two dead crewmen, he trod water all day, having heard many stories about the Japanese shooting downed aircrew. At nightfall, he cautiously inflated his dinghy and had the fantastic good fortune to be picked up next morning by a patrolling American amphibian.
On the flight decks of Nagumo’s carriers, the Japanese experienced an hour of acute tension as the Devastators approached through a storm of anti-aircraft fire. But most of the torpedoes were dropped beyond effective range, and Mk 13s ran so slowly that the Japanese ships had ample time to comb their tracks. ‘I was not aware or did not feel the torpedo drop,’ said a Devastator gunner afterwards, adding that this was probably because his pilot was trying to jink. ‘A few days later I asked him when he dropped. He said when he realized that we seemed to be the only TBD still flying and that we didn’t have a chance of carrying the torpedo to normal drop range. I couldn’t figure out what he was trying to do and the flak was really bad, so I yelled into the intercom, “Let’s get the hell out of here!” It is possible that my yell helped him make his decision.’
Just after 1000, the attackers had shot their bolt, having achieved no hits. Of forty-one American torpedo-bombers which took off that day, only six returned, and fourteen of eighty-two aircrew survived. Most of the survivors’ planes were shot full of holes. Lloyd Childers, a wounded gunner, heard his pilot say, ‘We’re not going to make it.’ The Devastator reached the fleet, but was prevented from landing back on Yorktown by a gaping bomb crater in its flight deck. The pilot ditched safely in the sea alongside, and Childers patted his plane’s tail as it sank, in gratitude for getting him back. Many survivors, however, were enraged by the futility of their sacrifice, and embittered by the lack of protection from their own fighters. A Devastator gunner who landed back on Enterprise had to be forcibly restrained as he threw himself at a Wildcat pilot.
American fighters had few successes that day. One of them was achieved by Jimmy Thach, who went on to become one of the foremost naval aviation tacticians of the war. Thach said he lost his temper when he saw Japanese aircraft boring into his neighbour: ‘I was mad because here was this poor little wingman who’d never