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By Root 1866 0

a dog named Lucky, was yapping in full voice, running around the decks seeking out his favorite person, the assistant medical officer. “Lieutenant Commander C. C. Garver of Atlanta would cover Lucky’s ears until the action was over,” Corboy wrote, “but the pup would yap furiously all the way through it.” The flak from the U.S. task force was furious and effective. Mustin wrote, “First plane missed and flew off. Second and third missed and crashed. Some came apart in mid-air, some fell wildly out of control, some came down burning, and some just flew on into the water in various stages of pullout. Majority of all that attacked was shot down.” Of eighty incoming planes, it was estimated that fewer than ten escaped. American pilots entered that buzz saw at their peril. When the Enterprise air group commander, Lieutenant Commander Maxwell F. Leslie, flew past the North Carolina, his Avenger took several hits but his relief at his luck was sufficient to keep him good-humored about it. He congratulated the battleship’s gunners for shooting well.

The Val pilots who lined up on the Enterprise were a persistent group. Enough of them survived to deal her six damaging blows: three bomb hits, and three near misses. The first hit the after elevator near the starboard gun gallery, penetrated five decks, and exploded deep within the ship. Half a minute later, a second bomb hit just fifteen feet from where the first one had, exploding instantly and igniting powder bags that started deck fires. The third bomb hit just aft of the island, on the number two elevator. Though it only partially exploded, it was enough to tear a ten-foot hole in the flight deck and disable the critically important elevator.

As bombs lanced down into and around the carrier, Admiral Kinkaid and his staff were tossed around the flag bridge by the shocks. Seventy-four Enterprise men would die, but it could have been far worse. The ship was saved by a little luck, and a lot of determination by her firefighters. The small blazes throughout the ship were quickly conquered; it was the timely work they did just minutes before the attack, draining and venting the gas lines and filling them with carbon dioxide, that prevented a far worse result. The flagship would live to fight again. With holes in her flight deck patched with sheet metal, she turned into the southeasterly wind to begin recovering aircraft.

Ninety minutes after the last Val had departed, the helmsman noticed a serious and potentially fatal problem: The carrier had lost steering control. A flood of water and firefighting foam had swamped the steering engine room, disabling the engine that moved the rudder and freezing the ship in a starboard turn. Recovery of aircraft ceased as the ship circled out of control. While she sheered through the formation, her officer-of-the-deck blasted her whistle in warning to smaller ships in her path.

On a PPI scope in the pilothouse, Captain Arthur C. Davis watched as the next wave of Japanese aircraft inched toward his wounded carrier. The southeast-bound gaggle of enemy planes passed just fifty miles to the Enterprise’s southwest. The reprieve gave the crew time to make critical repairs. Aiming to restore steering, a chief machinist named William A. Smith strapped on a rescue breather and, joined by one of his division mates, Cecil S. Robinson, ventured belowdecks, where temperatures surpassed 170 degrees. Finding the steering engine room through the suffocating heat, Smith managed to start a standby motor, restoring steering control to the bridge after thirty-eight minutes. The Enterprise air group was flown off to the Wasp, the Saratoga, and area islands. Freed from duty to the departing aircraft carrier, the North Carolina, the Atlanta, and two destroyers were sent to join the Saratoga group.

After absorbing the brunt of the U.S. carrier strikes and seeing one of his two large carriers damaged, Nagumo decided he had had enough. He ordered a withdrawal to Truk. As Nagumo’s carriers turned away north, Tanaka’s transport force was left to joust unprotected with Major